My Soul to Keep (24 page)

He dropped his hand from her face. “If I survive this, you know I'll always be there for you. If you ever need—”

“I know, I know.” She nodded brusquely, her smile resurfacing as she burrowed her hands in her pockets and tossed her fiery hair. “I'll be okay. I'm tough, like you. I'll figure it all out. I hear they make excellent coffee in Greenland. Best in the world.”

With a grim smile, he nodded, hoping she was right, hoping she would be okay.

Turning, he hurried away, redirecting his thoughts to Sorcha and how he was going to save her.

When the elevator doors slid open, Jonah had no idea what to expect, but it wasn't a smiling
human
receptionist sitting behind a mahogany desk. Smooth music piped in from overhead. He stepped warily out into the heated room.

“Hello. May I help you?” She looked up from her computer screen, a glossy red smile on her lips, as if she worked in a plastic surgeon's office and not some antechamber of hell.

Without altering her gaze, her arm shifted, dipped low beneath her desk. An imperceptible move. Instantly he knew she touched some kind of hidden alert button—or was about to.

His gaze narrowed on the single door behind her desk.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

“I want to speak with whoever's in charge.”

She scanned him, up and down. “I think that can be arranged. One moment.” She made several taps on her keyboard, then paused, reading something
on her screen. Her gaze snapped to him. If possible, her smile beamed several shades brighter. Falsely bright. “Excellent.” She stood from her chair in one graceful move and waved him toward the door. “You can go through this door. Someone will meet you to show the way.”

Right. He could just imagine who that someone might be. The demon witch responsible for abducting Sorcha? Lycans?

He rounded the desk, the bump of his sword at his side, beneath his coat, the only reassurance necessary.

He'd defeated lycans and demon witches before. He'd do it again tonight. He'd fight harder than he ever had because his motivation was stronger. He had to win. He must. Sorcha's life depended on his beating whatever waited for him. He had to get her out of here.

Before she kills you?
He shoved the nagging voice aside, unwilling to dwell on Darby's predictions. It wouldn't stop him, and it didn't make sense anyway. Why would Sorcha want to kill him? Even if they'd parted on a less than warm note, she'd never wish him dead.

Passing through the door, he found no one there to meet him. He didn't see anyone or anything as he advanced, just a yawning stretch of hall. Concrete floor and bare walls closed in around him.
With careful steps and one hand tucked inside his coat, he advanced, muscles tight and screaming with awareness. Only one thought pounded through his head. Sorcha was here.
Near.
He could feel her, almost taste her on his lips. It was enough. All he needed to keep going.

He passed door after door, all closed. Not a sound scratched the air other than the hum of the ventilation system. Cameras were stationed in every high corner, following his progress. He was walking into the jaws of the beast, descending into the abyss. It wasn't even a trap. It couldn't be a trap if he was aware that something nefarious and dangerous awaited him. If he embraced it voluntarily.

“Jonah.” The voice boomed from above.

He whirled around, searching for the source, the nape of his neck prickling at the familiar voice. The long chuckle that followed only confirmed the suspicion.

“Old friend, good to see you again. This is quite the week for reunions.”

He should have felt surprise at the sound of Ivo's disembodied voice, but given that he'd discovered Sorcha survived the blast in Istanbul, he was beyond assuming anything anymore.

“Ivo,” he called out, spotting the speaker vents in the ceiling. “Where is she?”

“Ah, looking for my little girl, are you? She did grow into a stunning creature. Too bad these aren't the old days or I would gladly give her to you. Alas, my goals have changed …”

Suddenly a door opened, as if by magic, swinging quickly near his right side. He jerked, flattening his back to the wall, braced for anything that might emerge from the shadowy space.

“You don't hold quite the same appeal. I don't need you in the same way. Funny how time alters one's perception.”

“What happened to building your army of lycans? Ruling the world and subduing man?”

“There are different kinds of power, I've learned.”

Jonah's gaze drifted back toward the yawning door. He knew it hadn't opened randomly or accidentally. “Where is she?”

“Go ahead”—Ivo's voice floated over him—“if you want to find her, she's down there.”

Not for one moment did Jonah trust him, but he didn't have much choice except to play this out.

“Bet you wish you'd taken her when I first offered her to you on a platter.”

“I think she was twelve the first time you tried to get me to take her to mate,” he growled.

“Yes, and something tells me she's not such an easy conquest now. Tell me, have you bred with
her already? From the possessive way you're behaving, I suspect you have.” Ivo chuckled and the sound curled menacingly on the air.

Jonah stiffened, sick at the thought of Sorcha back in the hands of her father.

Ivo chuckled. “Apparently I'm right. So much for your grand morals that prevented you from fucking her before.”

Black rage swept through Jonah. “You should have burned in that fire. I'll see you burn yet …”

“Promises, promises. What are you waiting for? Sorcha's just below. Get going, hero.”

Jonah moved through the door and descended steps onto another floor … even as he knew something was wrong. Ivo wouldn't hand Sorcha over to him so easily.

The air grew dimmer, smelled dank and rotting. The doors he passed now were heavy slabs of metal. His skin felt chill to think that Sorcha was behind one of them. Knowing now that Ivo ran this little operation, he hoped he hadn't sicced his lycans on her—she was his daughter, after all.

A sudden loud click reverberated in the air. Jonah stopped, staring straight ahead at the door at the end of the corridor. Larger than the rest, it drew his eye. It was bolted from the outside. He watched as that bolt lifted, the screws creaking noisily, oil-starved.

Warmth began to build at his center, spreading out through his pulling limbs. His teeth grew, thickening in his mouth as he transitioned.

The metal door slid open slowly. Jonah stopped, stared hard at the swelling darkness that dwelled inside the room. His heart hammered. Without a thought for the cameras following his every move, he pulled out his sword.

Instinct blared as loud as a horn in his head, telling him to hold the sword ready, that Sorcha wasn't inside this room. Something dark and hungry, ready to pounce, watched him from the confines.

Gradually a sound penetrated as he stared into the swirling black of that room. His ears pricked, adjusted for the slightest sound, undetectable to human ears. But he heard it. Steady and heavy as the rhythm of a metronome.

The fall of breath.

Demon breath, gurgling deep and rancid. Even where he stood, it reached his nose, made his limbs pull harder, deeper, and snap into their final position.

An actual demon watched him in corporeal form, staring out from that lightless room. He flexed his hands around his sword.

He'd only come across a demon in the flesh once. He'd barely survived the encounter,
but the experience had taught him what to look for. Had taught him to expect that he might not survive.

The moment it charged into the light, he caught only a flash of the large animal shape. The two-headed creature shot toxic spit from its mouth. Jonah swerved to avoid the hissing liquid. It landed on a metal door with an incinerating sizzle.

Jonah lunged forward in a blur, stabbing into the demon's thick, meaty chest. He grunted as he pulled his sword back out, the blade glinting with blood as black as tar. The demon bellowed, in either pain or rage. Maybe both. Jonah knew only that his efforts didn't stop it, didn't slow it down.

Jonah crouched and swung around, surveying the demon's body as quickly as possible, his gaze moving in a feverish sweep as he searched for the mark that would glow, a red handprint—the mark of the fall, God's handprint casting the demon into hell. Every demon bore it, though never in the same spot.

One of its dragonlike heads spit again, and Jonah moved too late. The acid grazed his shoulder in a poisonous burn, devouring his flesh, tissue, muscle. The demon saliva reached his bone and began eating through it. He couldn't stop the scream from escaping his throat, shuddering through the corridor and lifting up in the air.

With a bellowed rage, he swung and decapitated one of the heads. It fell and rolled along the floor. Still the demon kept coming at him, its remaining jaw snapping, toxic spit hissing through the air.

Jonah dropped and rolled, planning to take a leg out from under it—and that's when he saw it. Buried beneath the belly, almost completely hidden, tucked inside the joint of the front right leg, glowed the mark of the fall.

Grasping his sword in both hands, he plunged it up into the glowing red handprint.

The beast howled, fell to its massive side with a loud crash. Its four legs flailed for a moment. Smoke swelled up around it. Jonah staggered back, remembering what had happened the last time. Holding a hand against his eyes, he squinted as it burst into fire and ash. Flames raged over the demon, devouring it and sending it back to hell. From a safe distance, he watched, feeling only grim satisfaction when the demon was almost instantly reduced to a pile of charred rubble.

The tinny sound of clapping rang out over the speaker system. “Impressive, Jonah. Your knowledge of demons is … unexpected. I've underestimated you.”

Panting, he glared up at the ceiling as if he could
see Ivo. “Yeah, well, I've changed over the years.” His voice fell thickly from his mouth. “Where's Sorcha?” he demanded.

“Did you think you could just waltz in here and leave with her?” Ivo laughed. “Nothing is that simple. You killed my demon. I must confess some shock over that … and disappointment. You'll have to pay for that”

“Enough with these games!” Jonah roared.

Ivo's demented laugh rumbled through the air again. “Games … funny you should say that. I happen to like games very much. Very much indeed. You should remember that about me.”

That Ivo was a sick bastard who liked to torment those around him? Yeah. He remembered.

Steps sounded behind Jonah. He swung around, his bloodstained sword at the ready. The mark on his neck tingled and burned … as it had for some time now. From the moment he'd stared into the darkened maw of the room and felt the demon's eyes on him. He'd barely noticed, too worked up fighting for his life and struggling with the realization that Ivo was alive.

A nonthreatening-looking woman descended the steps. She was very earth mother in her brown wool dress and orange knit cap tightly fitted to her head. Her frizzy gray-streaked hair escaped the sides like straw bursting from a scarecrow's
hat. She reminded him of a vagrant he'd given change to outside his favorite restaurant in Seattle.

“Ah,” she clucked, appraising him. “A dovenatu. Imagine that. Two in the same week. How lucky are we?”

“Ingrid.” Ivo's voice rolled over the air with a touch of impatience. Clearly he had tired of playing with Jonah. He had always been like that, given to wild swings in mood. “You know what to do.”

“Yes, of course.” She gave a very businesslike nod.

Jonah poised the sword above his head, ready to defend himself and attack … not about to let the fact that she looked like someone's grandmother deter him from shielding himself. Dying now was letting Sorcha down, and he'd vowed not to do that. Not ever again.

Then something changed. He felt the shift on the air current, a sharp thinness.

His muscles constricted. His skull pounded, a twisting pain squeezing at the temples. A buzzing filled his ears, gradually turning into a soundless voice.
Drop the sword. Drop the sword. Drop the sword.
Pain thudded at his skull, tiny hammers seeking a way inside.

He resisted, his arms trembling from the force it took to hold on to the sword. “What are you?”
he ground out even as he already knew. His sixth sense around witches was clamoring loud and clear. This was the witch from Darby's vision. The powerful one, the one who'd overtaken Sorcha. The one, Darby had predicted, who would overtake him. The one he couldn't beat.

She frowned. “You're strong,” she muttered, narrowing her eyes and working her fingers in the air as if she were performing a magic trick on him.

The voice in his head intensified, a whispering mantra.
Drop the sword. Drop the sword.

His fingers unfolded. A violent bellow ripped from his lips as his sword clattered to the floor. She pointed at the demon's cell, directing him.

Without a word, he felt himself turning, twisting around. His feet moved, each one in a leaden step, one after the other. The dark cell loomed closer and closer. He couldn't resist, couldn't fight the witch mind-fucking him into doing her bidding. No wonder Ivo was able to control lycans, demons, Sorcha …
him.

Maybe Darby was right. Maybe he would die at Sorcha's hand. Maybe this witch would have her kill him.

The door clanged shut behind him. With a curse, he rotated in the room that stank like the demon who'd occupied it before him. He muttered, “Nice shithole.”

As he was coming to expect, Ivo's voice rolled out over the air. “There are better accommodations to be had. Please me, and who knows, maybe you'll get an upgrade. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll put an end to your life tonight.”