“No,” I said sadly, still looking at his chest. It was almost as if the curse had seared itself into his flesh, but almost immediately began to heal over. The blood had dried and began to flake off as he moved, leaving behind an intricate pattern of reddened lines on his silky smooth skin. Even as I watched, the redness began to fade to a faint pink. “No, I’m afraid the curse is still there. Why, I have no idea—I must have done something wrong, taken some false turn in the Charming. But I swear to you I’ll figure it out. I don’t care how long it takes, or how many dragons we have to beat off… oh! Guillaume!”
“What about him?” Constantine buttoned his shirt and started pushing the crates back in front of the door.
“He didn’t come running. He could be hurt or something.” I hurried down the little hall to the office area, heading straight for the room with the safe. No one was there.
I checked the room across the hall, and was just about to check the remaining two rooms when I heard a thump from the room I’d just left, and voices. I peeked in the room only to see a man with his back to me, bending through an open window, obviously helping someone else into the room.
“Demons,” I whispered to myself, and was about to call for Constantine when I realized that would give the demons warning we knew they were here. I closed the door gently and dashed to the office, scanning the room wildly for something that would serve as a weapon.
There were no obvious swords or battle axes, or even a handgun, but there was a small wooden chair, and I hefted it and raced back to the hall, parking myself just outside the door with the chair hoisted over my head. My plan was to slam it down on the first demon, and then bolt while screaming like bloody hell for Constantine before the second one could grab me.
I took a deep, but silent, breath, and prayed to any gods I could think of to make the plan a success.
Seven
The door opened and a man emerged from the room just as Constantine, wondering what Bee was up to, wandered into the hallway.
He was just in time to see Bee start a downward swing with a heavy wooden chair. Constantine leaped forward, assuming the man was a demon, but just before reaching him, he realized the intruder was his godson, Kostya.
“No, Bee!” Constantine yelled at the same moment she obviously saw she’d made a mistake. It was too late for Kostya, however, since the bulk of the chair hit Kostya across the side of the head.
“Kostya! Mother of balls, I’m so sorry! Are you okay? Is Aoife here?” Bee danced around the now-staggering Kostya, wringing her hands in despair.
Constantine grabbed his sagging godson, and hoisted him upward, propping him against the wall. He examined the gash on the side of Kostya’s face and gave him a brusque pat on the shoulder. “You’ll survive.”
Kostya started to slide down the wall, leaving a smear of blood behind.
“I’ve killed him!” Bee wailed. “I didn’t mean to! Constantine, you know I didn’t mean to, right? It was an accident! I thought he was a demon, and I had a plan, and was going to yell for you after I bashed the demon on the head, but now I’ve killed Kostya, and oh gods, my sister is going to murder me!”
Constantine shot her a pointed look, wondering if Bee did not see the irony of the situation, and debated pointing out that she was acting much the drama llama, but decided that on the whole, it would be better not to point out her obvious failing.
“No one is going to murder you,” he started to say, but just as he did so, a smallish woman emerged from the room, one with long brown curly hair and clear gray eyes. She looked from him to Bee, then her eyes widened when she saw Kostya.
“What have you done to him?” The small woman leaped at Constantine, her fingernails raking down his front. “You’ll pay for this!”
“Aoife, wait!” Bee tried to pull the woman off him, jerking her back by both arms. “Constantine’s chest is all hurt from the curse striking back. Besides, he’s not the one who beaned Kostya, I am.”
The woman called Aoife—who Constantine remembered was the name of Bee’s sister—released her hold on him and spun around. He thought for a moment she would attack Bee, but she simply snarled something quite rude before hurrying over to where Kostya was leaning drunkenly against the wall. “I might’ve known you’d feel free to bash Kostya’s brains in.”
Bee jerked back, rubbing her arms, her sister’s words obviously cutting deep. Without considering the action, Constantine put his arm around Bee and pulled her to his side, saying, “She did not attack Kostya intentionally. She thought he was a demon, although I am unsure of why she came to that conclusion.” He turned to Bee. “You have a reason for this?”
“Yes, of course I do.” Bee, who was still rubbing her arms, leaned into him for a moment before realizing what she was doing, after which she dug her elbow into his side until he released her. Tipping her chin up in a manner he was coming to enjoy, she added, “He crawled in through the window. What was I to think but that he was a demon trying to break in?”
“Ah. That is a good reason.” Constantine eyed the woman who was still fussing over Kostya.
“Good reason, my ass. You could have looked before you hit him,” Aoife snapped. She gave him a frosty glance. “And just who are you?”
“Constantine,” Kostya answered for him, the former reclaiming his wits at last. His voice was rough, but he reached up to stop Aoife from dabbing at his wound and pushed himself away from the wall. “That unfortunate being is Constantine Norka, once a member of the black dragons, and later the traitor who wrought their destruction.”
“That is old history, and has no pertinence to the present,” Constantine said with a noble lift of his own chin. “You are Aoife, sister to Bee? You do not look like sisters.”
“Aoife takes after our father, while I seemed to get most of my genes from our mom,” Bee said, biting her lip. “I am sorry, Kostya, I really am. It’s just—the demons are after us, and we have the ring, and then I Charmed the curse, but it backlashed against poor Constantine—well, I just kind of assumed that you were a baddy.”
“Why did you think that a demon would be trying to get in?” Kostya asked, frowning.
“Because Constantine got the talisman from Abaddon.”
Kostya transferred his frown to Constantine. “I might have known he’d have something to do with the situation. Everything he touches turns bad.”
There was a word on the tip of Constantine’s tongue, but before he could utter it, Bee hurried on. “It wasn’t Constantine’s fault. Not that part, anyway. Gary blabbered everything, and Asmodeus put the rest together, and Constantine says he let us escape so that his demons could follow us. Asmodeus’s demons, not Constantine’s. Ugh, I’m sounding just as confused as you look.” Bee put a hand to the back of her head. “I got hit in the head, you know.”
“You need not explain further,” Constantine told her, wrapping his arm around her again. This time, she sagged into him without rejecting the embrace. “Kostya is clearly in an argumentative frame of mind, and will not benefit from your time. What are you doing here, godson?”
Kostya flinched at the last word. “If it was at all possible to have you removed as my godfather, I would do so, but the last time I broached the subject with my mother, she lectured me about the sins of my father.”
“Toldi was quite mad at the end,” Constantine agreed. “That does not change the fact that you have not answered my question.”
“The front door was blocked. We had a call from the Venediger’s assistant saying that the curse was going to be Charmed without us, and we rushed here to make sure that all was well.” Kostya’s eyes lingered on Constantine’s chest for a few seconds. “I was going to say I assume it ended well, but that looks as if it is a curse.”
“The curse wasn’t destroyed, I’m afraid,” Bee said sadly, and Constantine was pierced with a need to assuage the guilt he knew she was feeling.
“It was not your fault,” he said without thinking. “The curse is a powerful one.
Asmodeus is a demon lord of much knowledge and skill. Or perhaps it was the talisman—perhaps it was not personal enough to him to act upon the curse as you desired.”
“I wish that were so, but it really was my fault,” Bee said, turning to face him. The look in her gray-green eyes stabbed deep in his belly. “I’m the Charmer. I’m the one responsible for breaking it. I should have known that the talisman wasn’t right—”
“One moment,” Kostya interrupted, glancing at Aoife. She was silent, but stood close to him as if she drew strength from the contact, and for a moment, Constantine felt a sense of quiet satisfaction that his godson, his namesake, had found a mate. Then he remembered the many times that Kostya had tried to kill him, and he brushed aside the silly sentiment.
“Did you say Asmodeus’s curse?” Kostya asked, his eyes narrowing on them.
“Yes. Look, I can try again. Maybe I didn’t study the curse long enough before trying to Charm it—”
“But it’s not Asmodeus!” This time it was Aoife who interrupted.
Constantine raised his eyebrows. “Who isn’t Asmodeus? I assure you that the demon lord we saw in Abaddon was him. Gary even referred to him by name.”
“Who’s Gary?” Kostya asked, looking puzzled.
“I am. Ow. A chair fell on be, too.”
“A chair fell on Bee?” Aoife asked, giving her sister a curious glance.
“No, on Gary. Or rather his cage. He broke his nose,” Bee said, waving away the question. “That’s really not important right now.”
“I think it is,” Gary said softly.
Aoife and Kostya both were staring at Gary with identical expressions of disbelief, but neither made any comment, which was fine with Constantine. He had more important things to do than explain why he had a disembodied head in a battered birdcage.
“It was Asmodeus we saw in Abaddon,” Constantine insisted.
“I have no doubt that you did, but that is not what I meant,” Kostya said, wincing when he touched the side of his head. “You have it wrong, as I might expect from one who caused so much tragedy amongst your own kin. The curse did not originate with Asmodeus.”
“Not Asmodeus…” At that moment, Constantine felt his blood turn icy in his veins. He was frozen, unable to move, unable even to speak.
“Really?” Bee frowned. “But he is the head of Abaddon.”
Memories swamped him, as did pain… and fear. The last was an emotion he’d deny until the day he breathed his last, but it didn’t make it go away. He was afraid… he was very afraid.
“Yes, but we didn’t find out until the day Aoife burned down G&T that Asmodeus didn’t cast the curse.” Kostya spoke just as if the world were the same as it had been a mere few seconds ago, but Constantine knew the truth.
And Bee, the sometimes annoying, sometimes enticing Bee just stood there with a slight wrinkle between her brows just as if nothing profound had happened. Sick with a sudden prescient awareness, Constantine opened his mouth to speak, but for the first time in his life, no sound emerged.
“Hey, that was a mistake, okay? I didn’t intend to burn it down. Plus it’s been rebuilt.” Aoife glanced around the bar. “Well, almost rebuilt. It looks a bit worse now. What on earth happened in here?”
“The curse backfired. Or lashed out. Or punished Constantine for me trying to break it.” Bee shook her head. “I don’t know quite what happened, to be honest.”
“I do.” Kostya’s lips thinned. “You used the wrong talisman.”
Constantine’s gut twisted. It was like he was caught in a nightmare, a horrible dream in which he was helplessly being pushed along to a being that loomed with black malevolence before him.
“How can you say that?” Bee asked, gesturing toward Constantine. “You don’t even know what we used—”
“I know that whatever you took from Asmodeus is wrong because Asmodeus is wrong,” Kostya answered.
“What are you talking about?”
“The demon lord who cast the spell wasn’t Asmodeus. Didn’t we tell you that?” Aoife asked, not looking at her sister.
“No, you most certainly didn’t! You said the premier prince of Abaddon had cast a curse on the demons, and that’s Asmodeus.”
“Yes, well, we found out later that he wasn’t really responsible for the curse. I must have forgotten to tell you that.”
Bee looked angry, very angry, but Constantine could do nothing more than absently note that fact. His whole being was consumed with trying not to shriek out loud.
“That makes a huge difference, you know!” Bee said. “What an utter waste of my time and energy, not to mention making Constantine go to Abaddon to get the talisman in the first place. No wonder the Charming didn’t work.”
“I’m sorry,” Aoife said, shooting Bee a quick look. “I thought I had told you about what happened at G&T, but everything was so confused and chaotic, that it just… slipped my mind.”
Bee’s lips thinned, but she simply said, “Well, now we’re back to square one and we still have to get a talisman. So which demon lord did lay the curse on you if it wasn’t Asmodeus?”
“Bael.” The word came out of Constantine’s mouth cracked and abrupt, as if it had been chipped from concrete. His gut twisted again at the word. He cleared his throat and tried again. “They speak of Bael.”
“Who told you that? Your lady friend who you keep drooling over but who dumped you for someone else?” Bee looked angry all of a sudden. “Wait a minute, are you saying you knew Asmodeus didn’t cast the curse and you didn’t tell me?”
“No, Ysolde did not know any more than I did.” Constantine had a sudden mad urge to scoop Bee up and take her somewhere safe, where they could live out their lives in quiet and solitude. It was such a startling emotion, he was momentarily distracted from the sense of horror that threatened to unman him. “She would have told me if she had known it was Bael. And if she didn’t, Baltic would have.”
Bee was shaking her head even before he finished speaking. “I realize you’ve been living with this curse for the last couple of years, but I think you’re wrong. I know that Bael was banished to the Akasha, which meant Asmodeus took his place as head of Abaddon, a fact which we ourselves saw.” A little wrinkle formed between Bee’s brows. Constantine had an urge to run his thumb across those glossy red-brown eyebrows.
“Oh, yes, Bael was sent away to the Akasha,” Gary said nasally, rolling himself upright so he could look at them through bleary eyes. “Asmo was thrilled aboud it, as you can imagine. He held a party to celebrate. They used me to decorate the top of a congratulatory cake. I wore a little top hat.”
“Bael did cast the curse, and just what the hell is that?” Kostya asked, staring at Gary.
“I’m a who, not a what,” Gary said, sniffing wetly.
“Gary is a knocker. Or he was. Now he’s a disembodied head whose nose was broken, but is now healing.” Bee’s eyes narrowed on Kostya, and Constantine thought she was very close to exploding with rage. “Do you have any idea what trouble you put us to by not bothering to give us the correct information about the curse? Do you know what we’ve been through?”
“You are a Charmer,” Kostya said stiffly.
“We didn’t expect you to take off and try to find the talisman,” Aoife said at the same time. “Kostya sent word to a thief-taker who was supposed to do that job. We had no idea you were going to try to get it, so really, you only have yourself to blame if you took it upon yourself to find the talisman.”
“Silly me trying to do my job my efficiently because you dragons were taking so long.” She held up a hand when Kostya started to protest. “Let’s just agree that there could have been better communication on both sides, and stop beating that particular dead horse. We have more important things to do than argue. Just how did you find out that Bael laid the curse on you guys?”
Constantine enjoyed watching Bee struggle to rein in her temper. He liked the way that, other than an initial burst of anger, she didn’t waste ti
me throwing around blame. She simply reacted, then focused her attention on what needed to be done next. Kostya slid a quick look toward Aoife, who blushed. “That fact came out only after Bael was released.”
“Inadvertently released,” Aoife said quickly.
“Goddess, you’re not going to tell me that Bael is loose now?” Bee asked. “Out of Abaddon? In the world with us?”
Constantine closed his eyes for a moment. Life simply could not get any worse.
“He is,” Kostya said abruptly.
“I… er… I tried to break the curse using the ring, and it ended up summoning Bael from the Abaddon,” Aoife admitted, meeting her sister’s eyes for the first time. “Yes, it’s all my fault, and don’t think I haven’t beaten myself up about it ever since that day, because I have.”
“You are not responsible for Bael,” Kostya said, pulling Aoife against him. The set of his jaw dared anyone to dispute his declaration.
Bee clearly was not impressed by such a show, and one part of Constantine’s mind, the part not busy shrieking and screaming dire warnings, was vastly amused by that fact. She might irritate his sense of what was right, but she was a woman who was not afraid to face difficulty.
“I am, though,” Aoife said, looking distressed. “It’s because of me that he’s out and about, and that G&T was burned down. If only we could get the talisman—”
“Well, you can’t,” Bee interrupted in her down-to-earth tone that made Constantine want to smile, and if he hadn’t been so close to going insane with abhorrence, he might have done so. “Right, so now we have to find Bael, and then steal a talisman. Any idea where he is?”
“He had been in Asmodeus’s palace,” Kostya said.
Bee shook her head even before he stopped speaking. “We were just there. All we saw was Asmodeus, right, Constantine?”
Constantine, locked in a world of misery and horror that was rooted in his past, did not answer. He couldn’t answer… at least, he couldn’t admit the truth. Not to Bee. The thought of what she’d think, of the repulsion that would fill her face when she knew… no. He couldn’t bear that.