Seduced by Power (9 page)

What's done is done.

— William Shakespeare, Macbeth

"NO! ROSE!" BLACK
tar silenced my screams and pulled me into darkness.

When it spit me out, I was sitting in a cavern next to Dean and Donna. She had fallen silent, eyes rolling into the back of her head, and Dean didn't look much better, his head dropping forward.

An old, hunched over demon stood in front of us with a torch. "Girl did it, she did. Didn't think she would. Must love you something big. Where be girl for our deal?"

This was the demon who'd sent Rose after us, huh? I lunged at him, punching him in the face with my fist, then flipping him on his back and kicking him in the groin. "You're Bankun?"

He nodded, rolling away.

"You fed off my fiancée? That will get you dead, demon or not."

I didn't have much strength left, and the old demon was more agile than he appeared.

He sprang up and dodged my next kick. "She be looking for you. I be helping her. Where she be?"

One last punch that grazed off his shoulder, and I fell back, spent. "She's trapped. The dragon has her, all because of you."

"Oh, that not be good. Need her."

I stood. "I'm going back. If he won't release her, I'll stay with her. I'm not letting her live down there alone." I helped Dean to his feet. "Go back with the stone. Take Donna. Tell Mom and Dad and Tammy I'm sorry."

Dean shook his head. "Not leaving you, bro, but I'll help you any other way I can."

The demon paced with the torch. "You love her this much? That you be staying here with her?"

"Without question." That wasn't to say it would be easy. The unspeakable agony of being here made it all the more urgent that I save Rose.

"There might be way for you to defeat dragon and save girl for real. You do this, I release her from promise and you all go home."

I'd been here long enough to know demons only made deals when they got something in return, usually at the other person's expense. "What's in it for you?"

"Dragon eat all our food. You kill it, we get more food. Win-win, no? I get food, I no need girl."

What he said made sense, and though I'd learned to never trust a demon, I had few choices. Go back and live in eternal torment with Rose, or risk trusting a demon in hopes of saving us all.

"What do I need to do?"

"I show you. Come with me. Friends stay here and rest." The demon walked away without a glance at us.

I turned to Dean and Donna. They both looked ready to pass out. "Dean, will you be okay here alone?" I hated to leave them, but they weren't capable of keeping up. I barely had the energy to move, and I hadn't suffered here nearly as long.

Dean nodded. "Go, man. We'll be okay. Save Rose."

I'd have to hurry. Every second I wasted, Rose was being tortured and Dean was put at greater risk of discovery.

Following the demon down a long corridor, I stretched my cramped body, letting muscles flex and relax. With no idea of what my task would entail, I had to prepare for anything and everything.

Pulling my thoughts from Rose, her sacrifice and pain, proved the hardest part for me.

Bankun led us through a maze. Right. Left. Left. Right. I did my best to track each turn, but it all looked the same —brick red walls with greying outer edges, stone that could have been older than time and maybe was. I couldn't have gotten myself out of there alone, which made me once again dependent on a demon.

Great.

At the next turn, we stopped in front of a door carved in intricate detail with the most hideous and evil face I'd ever seen.

I expected Bankun to open it, or maybe use a key, but instead he chanted words under his breath.

A translucent red dust floated out of his mouth, hovering in the space between him and the door until he spoke the last word, and the dust pushed itself into the mouth of the face.

Like a hallucinatory nightmare, the closed eyes opened, wood reshaping like putty in a sculptures hand. The rest of the face twitched, as if something lived beneath it.

Bankun straightened, his features changing, his bearing becoming more assertive. "I claim the blood oath you owe me, Az. Let us in." Even his voice had changed, dropping an octave and carrying more power.

The face in the door, Az, yawned. "I do this and we are done." Its eyes shifted to me. "Is he the one?"

Bankun nodded.

Az squinted and scrunched his wooden brows as if he'd eaten a lemon. "Are you sure? He looks puny."

My ego would have been bruised if I gave a rat's ass about what these two assholes thought of me. Instead, I waited and watched with no idea of what they were talking about.

"Just let us in, Az. He's the one. He has to be. If he doesn't succeed, he and his woman will spend their lives in the care of the great dragon himself. You see, he's very motivated." Bankun had dropped his fumbling speech habits and adopted a more refined way of speaking.

I wondered why. Who was he trying to trick?

"Very well," Az said. "It's your fate. Don't come knocking again after this."

The door swung open, and bright white light blinded me. Even if I hadn't spent what felt like an eternity in this dark pit of a dimension, this light would have been fierce and aggressive, like the sun on steroids.

Bankun's claws dug into my bicep, dragging me forward as I blinked, trying to see beyond the impossible whiteness. "What is this place?"

"Our place of power. It holds the secrets of our kind, and the strength you need to defeat the dragon and rescue your girl."

I stopped, refusing to take another step. "
This
is the big plan? You want me to use demon magic? No way."

"You and your girl like to put up a fight, but in the end, you'll do as I say."

The light faded, and my eyes adjusted. An iron pedestal stood in the corner of the room. On the pedestal sat a large book of spells more ancient-looking than anything my dad had in his collection. White light glowed from its pages, filling the room. Other than the book and pedestal, the room was empty, the walls carved with ancient symbols that pulsed with the same light.

Bankun walked to the tomb and caressed its pages like a lover. "How I've missed the feel of her pages beneath my fingers." It didn't take him long to locate the exact page he needed.

I planned to protest, to argue that there had to be another way. Who knew what demon magic would do to me?

But he waved his hands, and an image appeared in smoke. Rose, chained and nearly naked, locked in a cage, screaming and digging her nails into the stone ground as blood dripped from them. "This is her fate forever if you turn me down again. What shall it be?"

None of the pain I'd suffered at the dragon's hands compared to the agony that tore at me as I watched the love of my life being destroyed. "What will this power do to me?"

"It will give you the strength to destroy the dragon and save Rose."

I inched closer to the book, trying to read the words. "At what cost to me?" No power came without a price.

He drew a knife from a hidden fold in his robe. "All I need is a vial of your blood to complete the spell."

I knew he wasn't telling me the whole story, but still I held out my arm.

I didn't even feel the cut. Blood pooled directly onto the page with the spell. The book's magic absorbed it, sucking it in like a sponge. Bankun cut his own arm and let it feed the book as well, then chanted in his demon language.

The white light hovered around me, then seeped into my skin, and I dropped to my knees, screaming as my veins burned like acid. With each heartbeat the pain worsened, as if my body was killing itself from the inside out.

Darkness blinded me, and I collapsed to the ground.

When I regained consciousness, I was alone. I called for the traitorous demon, but he was nowhere to be seen. The book had been placed back on the pedestal, still emitting its light, but I found I could see more clearly, as if my eyes had changed to adapt to the magic.

I approached the door, and it opened without prompting, then slammed shut behind me.

Az gave me an appraising look. "You are stronger than I gave you credit for, human. Bankun will be pleased."

"Speaking of him, where'd he go? I need to get out of here and get to Rose."

"He will not be returning, but I will direct you. Follow the echoes and find your mate. Best of luck to you both." With that incredibly unhelpful advice, he turned back to wood.

Follow the echoes? What did that even mean? What echoes?

I walked in the direction I thought I'd come in from, listening with extreme focus. A low rumble filled my mind, almost imagined but not quite. It increased in volume until the screams became more distinct. They bounced off the walls, echoing through the corridors.

Were these the echoes I was meant to follow? I mentally reviewed the directions I'd memorized coming in and compared them to where the echoes led me. As far as I could tell, this was the correct way.

I picked up my pace, jogging instead of walking, knowing that one of those screams belonged to Rose. That knowledge sliced through me sharper than any knife.

At the end of the maze, I had two choices remaining: right or left. My memory told me left, but the echoes told me right.

Weighing my choices, looking in both directions for any clues, I closed my eyes, then decided.

Right.

Instead of sneaking in through the back way, as Rose had, I walked straight into the mouth of the dungeon and headlong into the dragon.

We faced each other, and I wondered how exactly this new power worked. Was I stronger? I didn't particularly feel it. Fake it 'til you make it, right? I had to at least act like I knew what the hell I was doing. "Give me Rose back. Now. I'm not leaving without her."

The dragon laughed. "Then you're not leaving, human. That's fine with me. You still have plenty of meals left in you."

"Release her, and we can both avoid a fight you won't win."

Now he roared with amusement. "I will give you credit for bravery, if not intelligence."

"Derek, no. Leave!" Rose said.

I turned and saw her, tears streaking down her beautiful face.

The dragon used that distraction to swipe at me with his claws, cutting four stripes of flesh off my chest.

Rose screamed. I may have, too, but I couldn't tell.

Red filled my vision, and then I felt it. The power. The change. The strength.

I roared in rage and dove toward the dragon, ready to fight, ready to kill. A blood lust I'd never imagined took over.

Dodging another blow from the beast, I slid under him and punched through his chest, my fist breaking through muscle and bone and thick skin until I reached his heart. Pulling it out, drenched in his green, sticky blood, no thought at all to anything but the thrumming in my ears, I held the heart up to my face and bit into it, more power flooding into me.