Gray Witch Read online

  “Rue—”

  That was all the warning Asa got out before I noticed the crowd parting around a newcomer.

  From the sudden hush, I decided he was a high-ranking daemon wearing human glamour.

  But his face, if it was truly his, set my heart pounding in recognition of who approached us.

  Orion Pollux Stavros, Master of Agonae, High King of Hael.

  Asa’s father.

  They could have been brothers. Twins. The centuries spanning between them were as nothing.

  Except for the steel of his eyes, sharp as honed daggers, the opposite of Asa’s jewel-toned warmth.

  “Son.” Overlooking Asa, he fixated on me. “You weren’t leaving without saying goodbye?”

  “Father.” Asa kept his voice smooth and even. “I wasn’t aware you were coming today.”

  Had we known, Clay wouldn’t have left my side to indulge his culinary curiosity at the concession stand.

  Suddenly, Ruger’s bid to go out with a bang made a lot more sense. He had been performing for Stavros. Or, possibly, acting on Stavros’s orders. Had Clay not warned me, I would have accomplished what none of the challengers had managed: I would have killed the daemon.

  “You requested an audience with me.” Magnanimous, the high king spread his hands. “Here I am.”

  “Here you are,” I agreed. “Lucky thing you caught us before we left.”

  “Fortunate indeed.” He smiled with avarice that chilled the marrow in my bones. “You must be Rue.”

  “That’s what they tell me.” I returned his frank appraisal with zero interest. “You’re High King Stavros.”

  “You will soon be family, so I’ll allow a degree of informality. You may call me Your Highness.”

  Determined to play nice, for now, I bit my tongue until it bled. “Thanks.”

  “Perhaps you prefer Master?” He studied my mouth. “I would like to hear it fall from your lips.”

  The thinly veiled order made my knuckles itch for an introduction to his jaw. “I’m good.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt.” He cocked an elbow in offering. “Please, join me for a walk.”

  Amputation was preferrable to touching a man who had assaulted a woman as he had Asa’s mother.

  “We would love to walk.” I threaded my arm through Asa’s instead. “Thanks for making time for us.”

  “Of course.” His throat bobbed as if swallowing my dismissal required actual, physical effort. “Shall we?”

  A subtle shift on the edge of my vision told me Clay would maintain a polite distance, unless we needed him.

  “I understand from my son that you wish to be rid of your y’nai.”

  “Yes.”

  “Our people will expect a certain amount of cultural tolerance from you.”

  “I’m prepared to honor Asa’s daemon heritage, as well as his fae heritage, in equal measure.”

  A tendon flexed in Stavros’s neck, but he kept walking, taking time to nod to his loyal subjects in passing.

  “Yet here you are, black witch, proving yourself a liar. You can’t afford to shun our customs, Rue.”

  “What of my customs? I am, as you say, a black witch. Where is your cultural tolerance?”

  “You are a fascinating creature, but I have yet to be convinced you’re a proper match for my son.”

  Way to sidestep a question yet still give me an answer loud and clear.

  “You have no say over who I mate.” Asa delivered the line with the ease of a person used to repeating an old argument. Often. “I’m a person of mixed heritages, and so is Rue.” White witch, black witch. A smidge of daemon. “We each must do our best to honor the differences between us.”

  Amused by Asa’s show of good faith, his father shook his head as if indulging a precocious child.

  “How about I keep the y’nai with the stipulation it can’t harm anyone without my permission?”

  “That defeats the purpose of y’nai,” he said, gracing me with the same patronizing look.

  “I would appreciate leniency in this matter.” I swallowed my pride. “Your Highness.”

  My pride threatened to come back up and spill all over his shoes, but I managed to choke it down.

  “I would appreciate it if you removed the wards blocking the y’nai access to your property.”

  Yup.

  I should have upchucked on his fancy leather shoes.

  Hold on a minute.

  The wards.

  Finally, he was making me want to not claw off his face, air-dry it, and use it as a smoothie coaster.

  Hmm.

  Lots of daydreaming about curing flesh into jerky-like stiffness today.

  I knew I should have eaten before we left the house.

  “The wards stay.” I brooked no argument. “Any daemon too weak to cross them isn’t my problem.”

  The air of a challenge left Stavros grinning and earned me a warning glance from Asa.

  “Why agree to a meeting,” Asa interceded, “if you never intended to grant our request?”

  “How could I resist an opportunity to meet your lovely potential mate?” Stavros, who was never getting another highness out of me, quit walking. “By all accounts, Rue, you are clever, wicked, and cruel. You’re aware my son shares none of those qualities? His mother spoiled him. Emasculated him. Ruined him.”

  That high-pitched whine returned, filling my ears, deafening me to whatever he said next.

  “Your father was a remarkable black witch. Legendary. Even among our kind. Mixing my blood with your heritage can only result in cunning offspring with the potential to crush other worlds under their heels.”

  Had the director taken the same no-nonsense approach with Calixta? Or had breeding been her idea?

  You know what? Scratch that. There are things kids don’t need to know about their grandparents.

  “Sever your fascination with my son.” He smoldered at me. “Together, we will topple empires.”

  Apparently, history really did love repeating itself. Me? Not so much.

  “As much as I would love to never in a million years take you up on the offer, I’m with Asa.”

  “Allow me to castrate him, and you may keep the boy.” He smirked. “A gift to my future bride.”

  White noise screamed in my head. Tension coiled in my muscles. The world bled into shades of crimson.

  As the chains began to drop away from my black witch core, I knew—I knew—I was going to attack.

  And I would kill him.

  But that would put Asa on the throne, so…

  Priorities.

  With great effort, I leashed my worst impulses, smoothed my features, and sank back into my skin.

  “Look at the time.” I checked my bare wrist. “I have heads to put on pikes at home, so we’ll be going.”

  “Think on my offer.” Stavros smiled then, hot and honey sweet. “I’m twice the daemon he is.”

  “Biologically? Yes.” I toyed with a lock of Asa’s hair. “But he’s dae. The best of both worlds.”

  A soft breath parted his lips, telling me no one had ever stood up to this bully for him.

  Their loss. He was mine now, and I wouldn’t let anyone hurt him. Especially not his dillweed of a father.

  “Thank you for your time, Father.” Asa slid his arm around my waist. “We’ll be going now.”

  “Perhaps I’ll visit.” His father’s eyes simmered where Asa and I touched. “To test those wards.”

  The warning was plain for me to hear, and the threat to me and mine made my blood boil.

  “Heads don’t pike themselves.” I tossed him a wave. “We’ll send you a card at Christmas.”

  Subtle tension quivered through Asa when we turned our backs on his father, but I tapped his thigh with my wand, assuring him I was armed. We were going home. If we had to go through his dad first, so be it.

  “Please tell me he put the moves on me as some misguided fatherly test of my love for you.”

  “You said love without frothing at the mouth or your eyes rolling back in your head.”

  “Hey.” I elbowed Asa. “I’m not that bad.”

  He kissed my temple, and I felt his smile against my skin.

  “Father doesn’t believe no applies to him. Consent is not in his vocabulary.”

  “What I’m hearing is, there’s a good chance I’ll get to teach your father a few new words.”

  “I wouldn’t have invited you today if I had known he would be here.”

  “You’ve met my family.” I leaned into him. “It’s only fair I meet yours too.”

  Mine was a boatload of crazy manned by a crew of the criminally insane, Aedan being the exception. Guess that made him the captain.

  “Father aside, how did you enjoy the spectacle?”

  Had he really not heard the answer I gave earlier? Or did he want one tailored to him?

  I wasn’t sure how deeply he slept when the daemon was ascendant, but they each had moments they kept for themselves. They didn’t share everything. Thank the goddess. The daemon must have held on to that one. Proof I accepted him, that I was proud of him for surviving.

  “I enjoyed the fights more than the concession stand offerings,” I hedged. “Clay might not agree.”

  “Those…” Asa wiped a hand over his mouth, “…weren’t crickets.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Tell me later, Ace.” Clay met us halfway back to the bleachers. “Have a nice chat with Papa, Rue?”

  “Stavros wants to knock me up in the hopes of birthing the next apocalypse.”

  “I miss all the good stuff,” he grumbled. “Did you at least kick him in the nards for the insult?”

  “No.” I regretted it too. “I was trying to be good.”

  “Sorry FIL was an assclown.” Clay pinched my cheek. “And that he wants to raid your ovaries.”

  “Pinch my cheek again,” I growled at him, “and see what happens.”

  “Which cheeks would those be?” He pitched his voice low to match Stavros’s. “Wanna polish my scepter? Ride my throne? Lick my crown?” He doubled over laughing until he wheezed. “The last one’s a keeper.”

  “How about I erase your shem then donate your body to Mrs. Gleason to use as a scarecrow?”

  “I’m not scared.” He smoothed a hand down his chiseled abs. “I look good in plaid.”

  Thanks to his (literally) sculpted physique, he wasn’t wrong.

  An urgent ring from his pocket shut us up as he brought the cell to his ear. “Kerr.”

  As Asa listened in, he pressed his lips into a hard line, but I was stuck waiting.

  “Yes, sir.” Clay vibrated with glee. “We’ll leave now.”

  After ending the call, Clay all but skipped to our private exit and waited for me to activate the portal.

  Only after we stepped from the bustling arena onto the quiet driveway in the exact same predawn hour as we had left for Daemon Fight Club, thanks to the pocket realm’s distorting time, did he hold still long enough to explain.

  “The Boo Brothers are back.” A slow grin spread wide. “Three guesses who gets to hunt them down?”

  2

  “The Boo Brothers.” I must have misheard him. “As in Malcom and Emmett Holmstrom?”

  “The very same.” Clay practically skipped to the front porch. “Can you believe it?”

  “I thought they were dead.”

  “So did I.” He held the door for us. “They’ve got to be in their fifties.”

  About to check on Colby, I froze as her battle cry rang out and then about-faced so as not to distract her.

  The last time I got her killed in Mystic Realms, she refused to talk to me for a month.

  Okay, she did speak to me. In elvish. It might as well have been Klingon.

  “You’re sure the director wants us to hunt down a couple of humans?”

  This would be a cakewalk compared to the caliber of cases usually assigned to us.

  “Well, no, but what the director don’t know won’t hurt him.”

  “Then who handed down the order?”

  “Parish,” Asa answered, having overheard the call. “Do you know him?”

  “Jai Parish?” A chill skittered down my spine. “The Dragon?”

  Parish was an ancient fae of undetermined species who smelled like brimstone and death. Smoke spilled from his nostrils when his temper spiked, resulting in his affectation of being a smoker, but cigarettes were an amusing prop. He had been known to carry the same one in his pocket for years before replacing it.

  As many fae did, he resembled a beautiful man in his midtwenties, about Aedan’s age.

  But you only had to stare into the midnight-blue pools of his eyes to glimpse eternity.

  “He’s the Deputy Director of the Black Hat Bureau,” Asa confirmed. “Took over right after you left.”

  “The director killed Mikkelsen,” Clay added. “Used a nasty spell to rip out his spine.”

  “Why?” I aimed for the fridge. “Not that he needs a reason to pitch a hissy fit, but still.”

  Mikkelsen had been his right-hand man a century or more, but no one was safe in the Bureau hierarchy.

  “Mikkelsen was there the night you took down the Silver Stag. The director wanted his proxy present on such a high-profile bust, but Mikkelsen didn’t even get out of his car. The director was pissed, looking for an outlet. He decided if Mikkelsen had gotten his shoes dirty with the rest of us, he would have figured it out, that you were planning to defect, and been able to stop you. That was his reason. Insubordination.”

  Hard to believe Jai had accepted the promotion, but, much like Stavros, the director wasn’t a man who heard no often.

  Where had the director, who had been hunkered down for months, gone that required Jai to step in?

  Possibilities wedged under my skin like splinters, persistent and irritating, but I couldn’t pick at them yet.

  “Drink.” I grabbed two cold water bottles for Asa. “The blood of your enemies can’t be that quenching.”

  With a murmur of thanks, he downed the first one in a single gulp then reached for the second bottle.

  He maintained eye contact with me while he drained it too, making my mouth go dry and throat tighten.

  “Ouch.” Clay whistled low. “Swap bodily fluids, and he stops needing to swap, well, bodily fluids.”

  As weird as it was to admit, I did miss that obsessive drive to share food with Asa, but it was fading.

  “You’re so right.” I leaned into Clay’s conjecture. “Let me tell you how we—”

  “Lovers need their secrets.” He clamped a hand over my mouth. “Keep yours to yourself.”

  “What else should I know about the Boo Brothers?” Asa wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “The fact Jai sent us after them makes me wonder what I’m missing. We’re a high-value team. This sounds like one of the cases assigned to rookies to dip their toes in Bureau waters.”

  “This is a dream assignment.” Clay scoffed at his ignorance. “These guys are legends.”

  “You can’t ask for their signatures then kill them,” I said slowly. “You get that, right?”

  “Kill?” He flattened his palm to his chest. “No one said kill.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  How else he imagined a showdown with two hunters of the supernatural ending, I had no clue.

  “These ‘legends’ are human?” Asa leaned around me to dig in the fridge. “Are you sure?”

  Nudging him back when he grabbed for water, I exchanged his pick for two bottles of tasty electrolytes.

  “They tell people they’re half human and half angel but not Nephilim.” Clay made the sign of the cross with his fingers. “Those are evil.”

  “Here.” I pulled a wooden chair from the kitchen table then shoved Asa down. “Sit.”

  I shouldn’t have been flustered when he tugged me onto his lap, but everything was different now. Even this, maybe especially his casual affection. I was still adapting to the portions of a committed relationship that happened with our clothes on.

  Stupid feelings.

  My inner black witch hissed in my mind that I was weak, pathetic, unworthy of respect or love.

  The rest of me, well, it tended to agree. But to keep him, it was willing to throat punch my doubts.

  Asa’s warm breath skated up my nape, banishing my turmoil and settling my worries.

  For now.

  “They have a divine purpose.” I picked up the story. “They’re special.” I leaned back against Asa’s chest, stuck to it, then suffered a pang of guilt for not feeling as remorseful as I should have, given why he was dirty. “They believe ridding the world of the paranormal blight is their God-given right. That it’s not murder, if the victims aren’t human. They’re big on the slaughter of innocents, murder of sympathizers, and theft.”

  Holy crusades, as history had proven, cost a fortune. Their money had to come from somewhere. Why not punish nonbelievers and pad their bank accounts at the same time?

  “If they’re not Nephilim,” Asa wondered, “then what are they?”

  “As far as anyone can tell,” Clay drawled, “they’re half human and half hot air.”

  A laugh spluttered out of me, but he wasn’t wrong.

  “They’re truly mortal?” Asa circled my hipbone with his thumb. “Human?”

  As warmth spooled through me, I began an exploration of the inside of Asa’s thigh with my fingertips.

  “Hey.” I flinched when Clay popped my hand. “No fair.” I slung the sting from my fingers. “He started it.”

  “Let’s break this up before someone—say, I don’t know, me—upchucks.”

  “If you do, it’s not our fault.” I scowled at the level of his handcrafted navel, a cosmetic alteration he was oddly proud of. “It’s all those crickets you ate.”

  “Okay.” He shook his head. “No more Mr. Nice Golem.”

  Rocking forward with preternatural quickness, he snatched me from Asa then sat back with a grunt.

  “Now.” He plopped me onto his lap and locked his arms around me, immobilizing me. “Let’s get back to the case.”

  “The Boo Brothers have a patron, or patrons, who may or may not be para.” I farmed my memory for more details. “They gifted the brothers magical artifacts and filled their head with stories of angels and demons. Their peak popularity was fifteen years or so ago.” I attempted to get comfy, but Clay wasn’t built for snuggles. “Do you remember the interviews? Goddess, those were the absolute best. Each a true cinematic gem.”