The Vengeance Demons Series: Books 0-3 (The Vengeance Demons Series Boxset) Read online

  An encore, seriously? Why were they back? Wasn’t once quite enough? When did they find the time to recover? When they popped out of the fog once again, I was ready. Whatever game they were playing, this time they weren’t getting away.

  Monk in the Middle once again extended a talon-like finger towards me. I grabbed his hand and tugged hard.

  The hand refused to drop to the ground.

  I tugged again.

  The hand refused to come off. It stayed on as if it was actually attached to his body. Then his fingers wrapped around my wrist, and he flung my body across what would’ve been the space above the ballroom, had I been on that plane.

  Some kind of invisible web caught me, pinning me to what would’ve been the ballroom’s ceiling corner. I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream.

  I realized too late the bearer of the non-fake hand couldn’t have been Monk in the Middle. Not only was my current attacker at least five inches taller, I could also taste the bitterness of heavy dark magic in the air. If the first three losers I’d seen had had that, they’d have had no need for the fake hand at all.

  The hooded figures started chanting again; the consistency of their skill level confirmed there was more than one trio of imposters in Grandma’s choir tonight.

  A bubble began to form in front of them, growing in size and temperature. It moved towards me in menacing slowness.

  This bubble looked just like the one Dan Pillar had employed to nearly fry me alive. It seemed too big of a coincidence that another person was trying to attack me using the exact same move as my target.

  To face the possibility of death twice in less than twenty-four hours was too much. I froze up and weirdly, the only thing going ’round and ’round in my head was how mad Sassy was going to be when I wasn’t around to warm up the bed for her. It was silly, but that was the thought that got stuck in a loop in my mind. I suppose it was easier to deal with than the bigger picture.

  The bubble moved closer still.

  Thud, thud, thud.

  Barely able to move my eyeballs, I nevertheless glanced towards the source of the sound. Grandma Aequitas was at the center of the ballroom, which was now cleared out of both guests and press. The place looked swept up. In front of her was a single row of chairs, filled exclusively with members of the Concord Council.

  The Council? In general, they wouldn’t show up as a pack to any social events, their combined presence considered too politically concentrated. Though no longer actively involved in the day-to-day running of the Council, Grandma was still an honorary member, and if she’d called a meeting, it meant that she was royally pissed. In a way, I couldn’t blame her. If my life weren’t in immediate danger, I’d be plotting my trickster half-siblings’ murders for dragging me into this mess.

  Though I couldn’t hear Grandma when I’d first gotten to the Shadow World, I could hear her fine now. I soon realized why. The summons was broadcast in the full-spectrum supernatural public channel, and even the Shadow World could hear it. “Nicolas Bartholomew Aequitas the second, arch vengeance demon of my clan, hear me. I hereby summon you to answer for your daughter’s behavior this night.”

  Ouch, talk about being embarrassed across all planes.

  In the overlapping reality, Dad paused mid-lecture to my half-brothers and tilted his head, listening. He glanced over at Mom on the couch and gave her a reassuring smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Then he snapped off the command to teleport to the ballroom.

  The monks tensed and stopped chanting. The bubble dissipated two inches from my skin. With a slight nod to each other, they summoned a portal and vanished.

  Why were they turning tail? My question was soon answered by the sudden appearance of Dad.

  He seemed as surprised to land in the Shadow World as I was. He looked around the greyed-out world in confusion. “What the—”

  Then he spotted me just as the invisible web dissolved, sending me plunging towards the dance floor.

  At least Dad found me and knows what happened to me. That was my last thought before I passed out.

  ***

  “Is she going to be okay?” My dad’s anxious voice floated to me across a sea of nothingness.

  “She’ll be fine, Nicolas. You broke her fall,” came my grandma’s haughty voice. She might be a healer, but Ms. Bedside Manner she wasn’t. “Are you sure she was attacked? I still couldn’t believe anyone would do that to her. The girl doesn’t even have enough raw talent to tempt a succubus.”

  “Mother, she was trapped by a silver web.” Dad kept his voice to a whisper, and though my eyes were closed, I could sense his caution against potential eavesdroppers.

  “You only saw it for a split second.” Grandma was clearly annoyed.

  “It was a silver web,” Dad insisted. “Spun with the finest silk of uni-spiders from the Grimmian Forest. Do you think I wouldn’t recognize it?”

  There was a warning in Dad’s tone, as if Grandma ought to know exactly what he was talking about.

  When she remained silent, Dad muttered, “My subconscious must’ve somehow sensed that she was in trouble and sent me to the Shadow World when I teleported.”

  “Well, she’s got luck on her side then.” A rustling of clothing suggested Grandma was getting up. “That’s something, at least.”

  I cleared my throat and started to open my eyes. Judging from the chandeliers overhead, it looked like I was lying on the dance floor at Grandma’s ball, away from the Shadow World. I knew I’d had real physical contact with the dance floor, and was no longer merely existing between planes, because the white marble floor was cold and hard against the back of my head.

  My achy head. In fact, every bone in my body hurt.

  “I already know you’re awake, Megan.” Grandma said as she pressed a finger to my temple. “Now go back to sleep. I’ll have you delivered back to your little human home while your father answers to the Council.”

  “But why should Dad…”

  That was as much as I could get in before I sank back into oblivion, as per my grandmother’s command.

  ***

  “Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!”

  The sound of Elmer Fudd singing to the tune of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” filled my bedroom. I moaned. The alarm clock had seemed fun and whimsical at the time of purchase, but after the night I had, it just added to the pounding of my head.

  I sandwiched my head between the pillows. Maybe if I stayed in bed, I wouldn’t have to remember the nightmare that was Shadow World.

  “Get up, Megan.” Enid teleported a few feet from the side of my bed and snapped her fingers. My pillow disappeared and my head hit the firm mattress with a thud. Ouch. It wouldn’t have hurt at all if my head hadn’t gone through that fall last night. Sighing, I sat up on the bed, my eyes slightly unfocused.

  “Why? What’s going on?” I asked, squinting at my mentor. There was a slight alarm in her voice, just beneath the surface. I vaguely remembered being carried home by her. Maybe. I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure. I was pretty drugged up on Grandma’s compulsion. Judging from the first light coming through the curtain though, I couldn’t have been in bed for more than a few hours.

  “Your father has given his statement to the Council. Now it’s your turn.”

  I swallowed. “My turn?”

  “You’re due at the Council’s Court in twenty minutes.” Enid referred to her watch of captured faery vapor, a swirl of dense eternal mist, which shaped and reshaped in order to depict the time across an assortment of major planes.

  “What?” I jumped out of bed and went into the communal bathroom I shared with Rosemary. I was relieved when all was quiet in the hallway. From the bathroom mirror, a girl in a torn-up ball gown stared back at me with dark circles under her eyes. Her large hair bun was mostly undone, with a few surviving bobby pins clinging on for dear life. The jeweled hair comb was long gone. My face had taken on the greyish hue of faded glamour left behind by the Blue U
nicorn. I looked like hell, and not in a good way. I closed my eyes and willed myself not to think about how close I was to going to hell. I scrubbed my face hard and did the best I could to smooth out my hair.

  I went back to my room and started fumbling through a large pile of clothes lying on top of my suitcases. I changed into dark jeans and a blue top. It was the closest thing I had to courtroom wardrobe.

  I didn’t know how I managed it, but in less than ten minutes I was ready to go. All without the help of magic.

  Enid touched my arm and halted my teleporting attempt. “Before we go, I want you to understand what you’re up against.”

  “Look, I didn’t even know about my half-brothers’ plan, and my dad knew even less than me.” I protested.

  Enid’s face softened. “Megan, you have to see this from their prospective. In the Council’s eyes, you led your trickster kin to the ball, and they got exactly what they wanted at our expense.”

  “Oh, come on, they’re just a bunch of jokers wanting a bit of street cred.” I was mad at them, and I’d deal with that later. But to be fair, tricksters would always be tricksters. And deep down, I knew that my fun-loving, irresponsible, annoying half-brothers would lay down their lives for me, if it came to that. Folks of trickery were stubbornly loyal in that way, despite their reputation. So I had a bit of a soft spot for them.

  “And street cred—” Enid said the two words in disgust, “—they’ve got.”

  She tapped her watch, and the ever-changing faery clouds in it projected a motion picture outward, much like a human 3-D laser display device. Wait, was that a video of Santa Claus slipping on the ballroom floor, knocking people over like they were bowling pins?

  “One of your reckless family members had a camera strapped onto his body and it filmed the entire fiasco. The video received over five billion hits on the DemonTube across all planes within the first hour,” Enid sighed.

  I winced. Oh, crap. The DemonTube was popular amongst witches, fae, and other demons. Tricksters weren’t the only ones who thought that vengeance demons had a stick up their collective butts, so I could see how the ballroom fiasco could go viral. The sight of the grand Aequitas mansion being trashed by tricksters would be a guilty pleasure even for some less socially advantaged vengeance demons.

  I, of all people, knew how important dignity and image were to the Concord Council. They’d see the chaos as a humiliating loss of control, and having such embarrassment being multiplied by five billion times…wow, this was much worse than I originally thought.

  And no, they weren’t holding the tricksters responsible. To them, tricksters were uncivilized savages anyway. They were holding me and my dad, members of their own kind, accountable. Great.

  Enid cut off the video just as Cousin Fred banged the union rep of the migraine fairies on the forehead and sent the tiny fae flying across the room. “Now that you’re aware of this, let us hurry.”

  She and I teleported right into the courtroom of the Concord Council five minutes before my scheduled hearing.

  The court was located just off the campus of the University of Demonic Studies. I did mention that the Concord Council and the Board of Governors at my school were one and the same, right? In other words, a single organization controlled every step of my career, and its prejudice toward me carried over year after year. Talk about having the chess pieces set against me.

  Despite the sunny day just outside the window, the court itself was quite dark due to its espresso wooden…well, everything, from its paneled walls down to the court gavel.

  When we arrived, the courtroom was already full. There was my dad in the public seating at the back, his eyes cautioning me to watch my temper, and the entire Council lined up along the right side of the wall. Most members I knew by reputation, but I had never dealt with them in a direct manner. Enid was generally the go-between.

  Not today.

  The court was in session. There was a girl at the defense table with her back to me, without the presence of counsel, her head downcast and shoulders slumped. It looked like this was part of an earlier, unrelated proceeding. Whew, so I’m not late. I breathed out in relief.

  Edbert Llewellyn Advocatus, FCVD, the Fellowship Chartered Vengeance Demon and high judge who headed the Concord Council, droned on, “…we found the result of your first solo practice session unsatisfactory. The target hardly suffered at all. He’s a child molester, and you only managed to get him fired from his camp counselor job.”

  “I’m sorry,” the accused mumbled. “I panicked. It won’t ever happen again, sir.”

  “That’s ‘It won’t ever happened again, your honor.’”

  “Yes, your honor,” the accused echoed in a low, meek voice.

  A child molester? When had something like that ever been a freshmen gig? First years dealt with cheaters and petty criminals, and seniors dealt with negligence and progressively violent wrongdoings. But in general, a vengeance demon wouldn’t tackle gross cases like child molestation until he or she was close to being designated. Of course the accused screwed up the project—she’d been set up to fail.

  I realized who the accused must be. It was Serafina, the high judge’s very own niece. When we hung out, she didn’t talk about her home life, and I left it be. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it was hard joining an old family of high achievers after a lifetime away. In the high judge’s bid to appear impartial in dealing with kinfolk, she hadn’t even been provided with a proper counsel. Asshole. No wonder the lively girl I saw last night was now all but gone, her spirit deflated and her eyes downcast.

  “You’ll do another two practice sessions. Every failed one will result in double the work, so on and so forth.”

  The high judge sounded the end of the session with a bang of his gavel. As Serafina headed for the exit of the courtroom, she saw me and flushed. Couldn’t blame her for being embarrassed. I nodded slightly to convey my support. She smiled back, her face strained, and left.

  Guess I was next.

  Enid led me to the same table Serafina had been sitting at just moments ago. I supposed Enid was serving as my defense counsel or something, assuming I was actually on trial.

  Who was I kidding? Of course I was.

  Grandma Aequitas entered the courtroom and seated herself on the left side of the wall, opposite the regular Council members. Her face was regal and expressionless. She wouldn’t even look in my direction.

  Things had gotten a little heated the last time we’d met, hadn’t they? Damn, it all seemed like a very bad dream.

  High Judge Advocatus called the court to order. “Now, to the real matter we’re gathered here today to discuss, and the reason that brought us out of our beds last night. Miss Aequitas, this council has tolerated your unfortunate origin, your less-than-stellar disciplinary record, and numerous complaints from your classmates. Instead of gratitude, you brought shame to not only your own house, but also our entire race. We’ve been more than generous. What have you got to say for yourself?”

  Yeah, they were being real generous. If I were a full vengeance demon, I wouldn’t be here right now. Esme, for one, wasn’t.

  I stood and looked to Enid. She nodded encouragingly. I cleared my throat. “Your honor, I didn’t have anything to do with what my half-brothers did. I went to the ball so I could talk to my grandmother, that’s all.”

  High Judge Advocatus looked to Grandma Aequitas, and she said tonelessly, “She did come to me with a ridiculous request, but I have no way of knowing if that was the true reason she was at the ball.”

  Thanks for vouching for me, Grandma. The woman could sure hold a grudge. She saw the state I was in just hours ago, right? Couldn’t she cut me some slack?

  High Judge Advocatus appeared curious. “And what was this request?”

  “She had the gall to ask me for extra magic.” Grandma’s lips curled back into a snarl. “I turned the too bold girl down, and she left. Next thing I knew, her trickster brothers were bringing down the
house.”

  Oh, I sure sounded guilty when she put it that way. Really guilty. The rest of the Council seemed to think the same way, as they whispered amongst themselves and nodded to each other. Total sheep mentality.

  Demonic, powerful, grown-up sheep.

  High Judge Advocatus turned back to me. “And what were you asking the additional magic for? To sell it like a common trickster thief?”

  My hands fisted at my sides. Yeah, as if he didn’t know why I needed the boost. He just wanted to give me enough rope to hang myself. “I needed the magic to finish my co-op assignment, your honor,” I answered.

  “You require help to complete your first assignment? But it was just a simple one with an elderly human—”

  “My target is not helpless. He tried to kill me. With magic.”

  The high judge glared at me. He was not used to being cut off. “There’s no evidence to suggest that Dan Pillar has any knowledge of supernatural nature.”

  “Then the record is outdated.”

  High Judge Advocatus’s nose flared. “There’s no evidence to suggest that our record is outdated.” Shoot me, the high judge was a living, walking bureaucrat. And he wasn’t done. “So as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, your first assignment is a simple one with a human of advanced age, and you failed to complete it. You didn’t inform us of your failure in a prompt manner. Instead, you went behind us and sought to increase your magic to fix the matter yourself. Did I get that right? Miss Aequitas, are you sure you’re suitable for this program?”

  By the end of his little speech, Judge Jerkface had dropped all pretenses of neutrality and practically gloated at me.

  I’m no more unsuitable for this program than your own niece, your honor.

  I bit my tongue on that one as well. Even I could see this was the perfect storm. The Council had had it in for me since birth. Given my sins as listed by the high judge, my half-brothers’ troublemaking was just the icing on the cake.

  Never mind that I was innocent, never mind that Dan Pillar was a special case, and never mind that I almost lost my life in the Shadow World.