A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums (Lilith and Co. #1)

Chapter 21

Chapter

Twenty-One

A hugely tall, strong, and dare I say, beautiful man stepped out from the shadows. He wore an updated commando uniform—all black. Boots. T-shirt. Cargos. Beret. I bet back in the day, he flaunted his strength as a Roman gladiator. The man just looked the part.

“ Kimaris ,” Connor said, nodding and looking terribly unimpressed. Given the situation and how well I knew my mate, he was feigning his nonchalance at this dubious situation. “Long way from home, aren’t you?”

Kimaris? Who the hell was Kimaris? I never lamented not growing up in the super community as much as when we encountered bad guys. Bad guys made me feel so inferior. My legitimate grandmother gave rise to all witch culture. Given she’d brought the magic from the Garden of Eden into the world, I felt a little disgruntled at my lack of knowledge. My mate needed me and all I could discern was that a big demon guy had trapped him.

“What are you doing so far from your master, puppy?” Kimaris asked in this condescending tone that made me want to slap him across his dark-skinned, chiseled face.

“My master ?” Connor scoffed. “I work for a living. You’re the only one here with a master—marquis. Given Luc pretty much created this whole realm, I’m not sure where your bloated sense of self-confidence comes from.”

Go, Connor. Bloated sense of self-confidence. God, his smart use of vocabulary made me so stupidly happy, especially in the face of this nasty situation. Though the nasty situation was probably why I honed in on smart vocabulary. It kept me from panicking. Panicking always helped, said no one ever.

As big and intimidating as Kimaris appeared, he snickered like a weasel. “He might’ve been the first, but Lucifer is far from the smartest or the strongest.”

“Hmm… If you think that, I pity you,” Connor replied. It hit me then, of all the demons of hell, Luc had angel power. Fallen, yes, but still freaking angel power.

“ Enough ,” Kimaris snapped. “Where is your mate? You’ve been traveling together.”

“That’s cute that you think I’d tell you even if I knew. We got separated.”

“Bullshit. What kind of imbecile do you take me for?”

“Well, given the cage here, knowing who I am and who I work for—I’d say the biggest kind. And black salt. Bravo. Someone did his homework.”

Black salt? Homework?

Kimaris snickered that weaselly snicker again. “Black salt. Weakens and can even kill hellhounds. It’s pretty brilliant.”

“How’d you know I’d end up here?”

“I just got lucky. Too many of your kind have started siding against us. Why? You pledge your lives to protect supers who don’t care about you. We’re offering power and instead of accepting the offer, you double down on your unrequited loyalty.”

“Unrequited?” Connor asked and I heard the eye roll in his voice.

“Do you think Lucifer cares what happens to you? He’ll replace you faster than you can bark.”

The byplay fascinated me. Clearly, Kimaris had no idea about friendship. Luc would no sooner turn his back on Connor than I would. And the cage was made from black salt? It weakened and could even kill a hellhound? I needed to get my mate out of there— stat . Who thought making hellhounds vulnerable to something like salt was a good idea? And who had the power to implement it?

“Listen, you made a mistake with the cage,” Connor said. “You weren’t even on my radar. Now, I’m going to have to kill you.” He sounded confident, but I heard the softest wince at the end of his statement. This black salt cage hurt him. My mate.

“Oh, Connor…” He tutted. “Do you honestly think that can happen before you die?”

“Well, I’ll give it the old college try.”

“Dare to dream, mutt.”

Okay, no. That was one snarky cutdown too many! Nobody got to make dog jokes with Connor but me . It was our thing. Insults were our love language. I had a problem, though—I needed witch tea or time to get my strength back. I didn’t have witch tea, but I really didn’t have time.

“As much as I love getting together,” Connor said, forcing an easy smile. “I have things to do. Let me go and I’ll deal with you later. You can go about your business for now.”

“I can go about my business? Connor Baghest, I thought you were smarter than that.” The demon held two fingers out in front of him and raised his hand upward. The cage and Connor raised off the floor. As the cage lifted, a black salt bottom formed under my mate, giving him no means of escape. Then the demon pushed his hand out and the cage started to move.

Of course, we were moving. Why wouldn’t we? It took everything in me to keep myself cloaked. I did not sign up for this. But then again, Connor would burn down the world to save me. He deserved no less.

He pushed the hovering cage deeper down into the bowels of the catacombs. Keeping myself masked became more and more difficult as we entered a dark tunnel with water dripping through the porous stone and puddling on the floor. I timed my steps the best I could with Kimaris’s steps to hit the puddles at the same time. If he heard the splashes from my footsteps, I’d be toast—demons, fire. I carried no illusions that he wouldn’t burn me first and find out my identity later.

Connor’s face had grown pale by this point. I wouldn’t have been able to see his face if not for the red glow signifying Kimaris as a demon engulfing his entire body—Kimaris’s body, not Connor’s. But the glow lit the way enough for us until we halted in front of a stone staircase.

The demon lifted his hand to raise the cage and ascended the stairs that led us into well… It looked like a third-world prison. Or like one out of the sixteenth century.

So far, my presence remained unnoticed. At least there was that. We stopped in front of a cell. A woman with dark, almost black hair, and deeply tanned skin—she appeared of Middle Eastern descent, maybe?—approached Kimaris with a set of wrought-iron skeleton keys on a large keyring. She wore the same commando garb as Kimaris.

“Connor Baghest?” she asked. “How’d you bag him?” An air of awe resonated in her words.

The man shrugged. “I got lucky.”

“Do we kill him now?” she asked next.

He shook his head. “And lose this bargaining chip?”

“I thought… he had no… loyalty to me,” Connor said, straining to speak now.

“Just because he’s not loyal doesn’t mean you aren’t useful to him. We’ll see what B—” He stopped himself before finishing and then redirected his thought. “We’ll see what the big man in charge wants to do with him.”

The woman unlocked the closest cell and Kimaris pushed the cage inside. The door snapped shut and the cage dropped, disintegrating into a pile of black dust on the floor. The bars on the cell door were made of that same black salt. Connor slowly stood, wobbling as if about to lose his balance, and stepped gingerly over the pile of salt. He pressed his back against the wall and slid down until his butt hit the floor. Even though the walls and floor were made of stone, the salt had clearly weakened him too much to fight back. It killed me to see my mate so vulnerable. Connor Baghest was never vulnerable.

As weak as I felt, I still used what magic I could to push a thought into his head. “ We need to get you out. ”

My head filled with static and a crackling noise before I heard, “ You aren’t strong enough. Find a witch to heal you. ”

“ I won’t leave you. ”

“ Please, Simone… I need you to do this .” His eyes closed and his breathing went shallow. My stomach plummeted as fear filled me.

“ Connor! ” I shouted in my head.

His eyes blinked open. “ Sorry. ”

“ Don’t you die on me. ” Tears rolled down my invisible cheeks. “ I’ll kill you if you die on me. ”

“ I won’t die… I have too much to live for. ” Because that didn’t make me cry harder. “ Follow the hallway… away from the chamber ,” he continued. “ You should find another set of stairs… Take them up. ”

“ I love you ,” I whispered to him. When he said nothing back, I ran as fast as I could out of the chamber and down the dank hallway. I found the stairs he’d talked about and rushed up, stopping abruptly when a demon stepped around the bend going down. These staircases hardly allowed for more than a person’s body width to begin with. I flattened my back against the wall and sucked in, holding my breath, fingers crossed, that they wouldn’t skim me as they passed.

Apparently, they were all part of the commando club. All-black, the required uniform. As this one passed me, she sort of sniffed the air but kept on walking. Once she’d cleared the stairs, I bolted up the rest of the way. Where the portal opened up to wasn’t much better than what I’d left behind. I emerged into a bombed-out sandstone building. Heat more stifling than the temperature-controlled Hades assaulted me. I smelled sand. From this, I gathered I’d made topside in the Middle East or Northern Africa. But I could literally be anywhere—at least anywhere with a desert. Just peachy. Northern African and Middle Eastern countries didn’t exactly have the witch-friendly stamp of approval. I didn’t mean to imply every person held a prejudice against our kind, just the regions as a whole.

No w I faced a different problem. Keeping myself cloaked in my weakened state for such a prolonged period of time wore my butt out. I had to rest and that just pissed me off because Connor needed me. But I felt so weak, I could hardly keep my eyes open. Literally. Some savior of the world I turned out to be. I found a dark corner of the room and dropped down. There, I passed out.

A dream filled my head as I slept. Dreams didn’t usually penetrate this level of consciousness for me, but here we were. Mr. Pooches, my gorgeous black kitty, hopped up on my lap and sat, looking right at me.

“Mr. Pooches?” I scratched behind his ear. “Are you okay?” He pressed his head into my hand to really get his scratch on. “You should have enough food and water.”

“I’ve had my fill,” he responded, winding his tail around my wrist, and I jerked back in surprise. Mr. Pooches never talked to me. Of course, I didn’t remember ever dreaming about Mr. Pooches, either.

“You talk?”

“I talk—but only to you.”

“Why only to me?”

He cocked his head and shot me a ‘ really? ’ look. I wasn’t trying for obtuse. Mr. Pooches had never talked to me before. Sue me.

“Okay,” he went on. “We don’t have time for all the explanations the situation requires. I’m here to tell you there’s a witch nearby. She’s somewhere in your vicinity. Open your mind to sense her. She’ll help if you explain the situation.”

“‘A witch nearby’?” I asked stupidly.

Mr. Pooches got very impatient with me. “Listen—” He turned away as if distracted. “There’s been trouble at the house and I think they’re back. Go find the witch. I’ll join you as soon as I can.” Then he popped out of my dream, leaving me all alone.

That was the last I was aware until my eyes blinked open. I remembered every part of that dream. It was just a dream, right? At this point, I couldn’t tell if I was coming or going. One thing became clear, when I heard men talking in a foreign tongue I knew I needed to get the hell out of here. They walked right past my dark corner. Lilith knows how they didn’t see me or smell me because my cloaking ran out. Once they’d passed me, I gave it a few more seconds to ensure they wouldn’t see me before leaving the building and I moved through the darkened streets, pressing myself against walls when necessary and running at other times. The whole time keeping my senses open to sniff out any witch in the area.

I turned down street after street until coming to the end of a road. A dead end. Yeah, if I survived this, I’d lobby to change that term. No one needed that kind of trauma reminder. The only structure left looked like one good wind would blow the thing right over. Still, my Scooby-sense told me that the witch was here somewhere. I walked up to the building and tried to open the door, but it was locked. A locked door, here? Right. Despite being scared out of my mind, I lifted my fist to knock.

No one answered. So I knocked again. No one answered again. I knocked a third time and the door finally creaked open. Very frightened eyes peered out at me. Then once they’d taken me in, they grew huge. The door swung open. Someone grabbed my arm and dragged me inside, slamming the door behind me.

She spoke, but I didn’t understand her.

“English?” I asked, hoping beyond hope that she had a better education than I did. She nodded once. Her eyes assessed me skeptically. I know… trust me, I know. What was a purple-haired, English-speaking American doing knocking on her door, especially in the dark? She was in for a whopper of a tale… if she helped me.

“Who are you?” she asked in almost-perfect English. Just with an accent of the region attached.

“My name is Simone Lamia. I need help.”

“What are you?” she asked next and yes, I rolled my eyes, even in this precarious situation. I always got that question. Why would it be any different here, while my life was on the line?

“That’s a long story,” I replied.

“Your name is Simone Lamia, and you need help?” she asked, and okay, we were going to play the repeating game now.

“Yes. I need your help.”

“ My help? Why me?”

“You’re a witch. I require a witch.”

“How did you find me? All the witches have gone into hiding. I have wards around the building.”

“I sort of have witch powers,” I replied.

“‘Sort of’? So you’re a witch? I don’t get ‘witch’ from you.”

“Well, I have witch- ish powers.”

“Witch-ish powers? I don’t understand.”

“Can I sit down? I’m exhausted and feeling a little vulnerable here. More than that, I’m running out of time. Are you willing to help me or not?”

“You will explain?”

“I’ll explain everything.”

She nodded once and turned, walking inside.

I followed.

Please let Dream Mr. Pooches be right.