Something Wicked (16 page)

The witch shook her head. “My magic was born in me and developed over time, so my soul remains untouched. My black magic isn’t as strong as my white, but for the Malleus, I’ll be whatever they need me to be.”

“The
Malleus
?” Eden recognized that name and it scared her. It was a group that had existed for centuries to combat the darkness that seeped into the human world. The slayers and executioners of the supernatural—of witches and demons and other things that went bump in the night. Eden could see how they could serve a purpose to fight against true evil. But she knew the Malleus had also been instrumental during the Salem witch trials. They’d tortured and put to death a great many innocent men and women all in the name of good versus evil.

There was a knock at the door.

“Who’s here?” Eden asked, panic welling inside her again.

“Just relax,” Ben told her. “It’s somebody who can help you.”

“I don’t want your help.” She fought to stand, but a wave of magic pressed her farther back into the sofa. Sandy was keeping her magically restrained.

Ben went to the door and returned with a short man who wore glasses. His hair was white. He looked like somebody’s grandfather.

“Eden Riley,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the coffee table in front of her. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She regarded him tensely. “Who are you?”

“I’m Oliver Gale. I represent the Malleus organization, and I wanted to meet you personally.”

Eden’s gaze flicked to Ben, who stood next to Oliver. Ben had rolled up his sleeves and for the first time she noticed the raw-looking wound on his inner forearm. It was a brand of a fleur-de-lis enclosed in a circle.

She gasped in shock. “Ben! You’re part of the Malleus now?”

Ben opened his mouth to answer, but Oliver spoke first.

“He is. We’re very happy to welcome Ben into our ranks.”

She was stunned by this, and it made her feel sick to her stomach. She’d thought Ben was one of her lesser problems to deal with, but she’d been wrong.

Oliver studied her carefully. “I’m told you’re infected with a demon, Eden.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, but she knew it would be in vain. “You make it sound like I have a virus.”

He continued to study her. “On a basic level, it’s very similar. A parasitic entity that requires a host in order to survive. Something that will poison your body and make you very ill.” He cocked his head to the side. “Tell me about your demon.
Darrak
is it?”

She pressed her lips together and shot a look at Ben.

“It’s okay,” Ben said confidently. “Oliver’s here to help you.”

She had a hard time believing that.

“Why would you join the Malleus, Ben?” she asked, not liking how weak her voice sounded.

He looked down at his brand and stroked his fingers over the healing wound. “I can help people, even more than I could being with the police.”

“Even if they don’t want your help. Like me.”

His jaw tightened. “Sometimes the people who need help the most are the ones who resist the hardest. Like you.”

Damn his sincerity.

She struggled to breathe and make sense of this. She’d been told the Malleus were bad. She’d also witnessed a power-hungry Malleus member try to take Darrak away from her and use his power for her own gain. But maybe it was a case of one rotten apple spoiling the bunch. Oliver seemed legitimately concerned. Ben was definitely worried about her safety. And Sandy was completely willing to dip into her natural-born darker magic in order to help out.

That didn’t sound like a triad of evil to her.

“He was cursed,” Eden said simply, deciding to be helpful instead of continuing to resist. It could make all the difference in the world.

“Your demon?” Oliver replied.

She nodded. “A long time ago a witch cast a death curse on him, but it only destroyed his body. We’re searching for a way to break that curse so he’ll be whole again and won’t need to rely on me or anyone else for survival.”

“How long has he been cursed?”

“Over three hundred years.”

“Do you know his true name?”

“No,” she said. But she did. It was
Darrakayiis
, but to give that information to anyone else would give them power over him, which is why Darrak went by the short form. Plus, it was much easier to pronounce properly.

“She’s lying,” Ben said. “I heard her use his true name before.”

She sent a fierce look his way. He couldn’t be less helpful if he tried.

“And what is it?” Oliver asked.

Ben frowned. “I don’t remember. At—at the time I didn’t think it was important.”

Eden noticed the clock on the wall for the first time and was surprised to see it was after three a.m. She’d been unconscious for more than five hours. She had to get out of here. Even if their goal was to help her, they’d drugged and kidnapped her, and that wasn’t right. She was at a distinct disadvantage. They had all the power, and she was feeling like a victim who didn’t have any say in what was going to happen next.

She shivered.

“Tell me about the pain, Eden,” Oliver said.

She looked at him with surprise. “What?”

“Ben told me what happened earlier today. Was it a tearing sensation? Did it feel as though you were being pulled in two different directions?”

She threw another fierce look at Ben, who’d obviously told his new boss everything he knew about her.

He didn’t flinch. “You were in a bad way this morning. I thought you were dying.”

Eden exhaled shakily. She never wanted to feel pain like that again if she could do anything to prevent it. “Yeah. It was a tearing pain. Really bad. How do you know how it felt?”

Oliver crossed his arms. “Tell me about your father, Eden.”

That question seemed to come out of left field. She inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. “I never knew him. He was just some random guy my mother hooked up with.”

“Your mother, Caroline Riley. She’s recently deceased?”

Eden hesitated a moment before she answered. “She died two months ago. She fell down a flight of stairs at a casino in Las Vegas and broke her neck.” Her throat thickened without warning. The grief at losing her mother came in patches, always unexpected and never appreciated.

“And she never told you about your father?”

“Nothing other than the fact that she met him when he was hitchhiking, they had a wild affair over one weekend, and that was that.”

“Did she see him again?”

“No. But once when I was about five years old, he came by for a quick visit when I was playing in the backyard. That was the only time I ever saw him.”

Why was she answering his questions so willingly? A glance at Sandy showed the witch’s thin eyebrows were drawn together to show the strain of her fierce concentration.

Then it dawned on her. Eden was being forced magically to tell the truth. The thought only made her angrier, which helped to push away some of the fear that filled her.

“So you don’t know who he really was,” Oliver continued.

“No.”

“Just tell her,” Ben said tightly. “Eden needs to know the truth about her father.”

“What about my father?” she demanded.

Oliver crossed his arms and leaned closer, looking into her eyes. “Your mother never knew who she met that night on the road. Daniel was finishing his stay here in the human world as a Cerberus. Do you know what a Cerberus is?”

“I’m not sure.” The word sounded familiar. Maybe she’d heard it in one of her paranormal tutorials from Darrak.

“It’s a guardian sent here from Heaven to watch over the gateways to the Netherworld,” Oliver explained.

“Cerberus,” she said. Like the three-headed dog of Greek mythology who guarded the entrance to Hades. “And my father was one of these guardians?”

“Yes.” Oliver smiled. “Your father is an angel.”

TEN

That was funny. Eden could have sworn that he’d just said her father was an angel.

Obviously she’d misheard him.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a long moment of silence. “But could you repeat that?”

“Your father is an angel.”

Maybe she hadn’t misheard him.

She laughed nervously. “That’s impossible.”

“It’s true,” Ben said very seriously. “You’re part angel. The proper term is
nephilim
. . . and it’s very rare.”

Eden gaped at him. She felt cold and pale as if all the blood had drained from her face. “How do you know all this?”

He shifted his feet, his hands clasped in front of him. “I’ve been studying up.”

“I’m part angel,” she repeated. It sounded completely and totally ludicrous.

“You’re mostly human,” Ben told her. “But there is a part of you that is . . . Other.”

Her head was spinning out of control and she had the urge to throw up, but instead she pressed back farther into the hard leather and just tried to breathe.

Oliver reached for her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “There is a ribbon of celestial energy inside of you. We think this is what the demon has been drawing energy from. And this, Eden, this is what is causing your complications.”

She needed a time-out. A chance to get her head together. It was one thing to accept that Darrak had been dampened and Ben had drugged and kidnapped her. But it was another thing to be told her mother had a fling with a being from Heaven.

Her mother had been touched by an angel? Like, literally?

She finally had her answer.
This
was why she could hear Darrak when none of his other hosts could.
This
was why he could take form during the day. It was because she was human enough to be his host, just not
completely
human. She had a hidden bonus.

She finally heard what Oliver had said. “What do you mean by my complications?”

“The pain you’ve begun to feel—it’s a war within your body, Eden. The darkness from the demon is fighting against the light from your nephilim side. Each is trying to claim dominion.”

It was quiet then, enough for her to hear her rapid breathing. Her upper arm still ached from where Ben had stuck the needle earlier, and she tenderly rubbed the spot. She felt cold and stunned and confused and very afraid by all of this. “So you’re saying that good and evil are playing tug-of-war, using my body as the rope?”

Oliver’s gaze was serious. “Yes.”

She already knew she was in deep trouble just by being possessed by Darrak. This definitely upped the ante. While everything she’d been told had come as a shock, it was as if these were pieces to the puzzle she’d been trying to put together for a very long time.

Ben stood a few feet away with his hands clasped behind his back like a guard. Sandy remained seated in a chair across from the sofa, watching Eden and Oliver’s conversation carefully. Eden suddenly felt incredibly tired, and her head ached.

“I can help you,” Oliver said. “But you need to let me. Will you do that?”

She looked at his kind face. Her first reaction had been mistrust, but now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe the Malleus could help her. Maybe Oliver could help her right now.

“I . . .guess so,” she agreed, tentatively.

“Very good. Now, I must concentrate.” He closed his eyes, and a moment later Eden felt a strange sensation, as if something was searching her with cool, invisible fingers. She tried to sit very still.

Oliver’s brow furrowed. “There’s a shield over you.” He looked over at Sandy. “Come here, please.”

Sandy did as he asked. “Yes?”