Page 1 of Warmongers and Wands
Chapter 1
Hadur
Smoke curled from my bovine nostrils and I stomped the ground in a fit of anger that was far beneath the dignity of my usual behavior—the stomping part, that is. The anger part…well, for a demon of war, I liked to think I was relatively even tempered, but being summoned would annoy even the most stoic of hell’s minions.
Actually, my irritation was fifty percent genuine and fifty percent theatrics. It wouldn’t do to appear too eager to serve, too hopeful that the witch who brought me here might be interested in a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership, too hopeful that maybe I’d somehow find a witch to bond with. The chances of that happening were pretty much slim to none, though. Summoning had grown increasingly rare the last few centuries. Partnerships, an agreement with a witch that lasted beyond the one-off task, even rarer.
And bonding? It was a fantasy that most demons had realized would never happen.
It wasn’t like I’dneverbeen summoned before. As a war demon, I’d occasionally been summoned and sent to facilitate the demise of an enemy army, or stir up strife in a neighboring country, although I hadn’t been brought out of hell by a witch in over three hundred years.
But this witch…
She had auburn hair and a sweet face. I could see the energy like an aura about her, see it coiling around her arms. Where was her coven? The fact that she’d summoned me alone gave me hope that finally a witch had chosen me to extend an offer of partnership. To bond with a witch would amplify my powers as well as hers. To bond withthiswitch…well, I had some pretty lurid ideas of what else that relationship might entail.
Iwasa demon, after all.
“What is your name?” she called out, her voice husky with an edge to it that made me instantly shed my demon appearance in favor of something more human and hopefully more sexually appealing.
“Hadur.” I took a step forward, coming up against the impenetrable ward. “What is yours, witch?”
Her chin lifted and I saw she was young—a woman, but young. “Adelaide Perkins.”
“Why have you summoned me, Adelaide Perkins? What task is it that you wish me to complete?”
Normally I would have gone on and on a bit about how I was going to kill her and how dare she bring me from the depths of hell, blah, blah, blah, but this witch was comely and young, so for once I kept my communications unusually polite.
She blinked, those wide brown eyes deceptively innocent. “I did not summon you. Who did so? Who brought you from hell and set you upon my town?”
I frowned, not understanding what she was talking about. “Yousummoned me, witch. I came straight here from hell and am now your captive.”
She took a step back, biting her lip. “I did not summon you. I was gathering herbs for spell and I…Ifelta presence. But you are restrained in a circle and must answer me truthfully. Thus, I command that you tell me who summoned you and for what purpose?”
I reached out to touch the wards that contained me, wincing at the painful and pleasurable sting of the energy. It felt the same as the spell that had summoned me here, the same as the energy coiling around this witch’s arms. Was she lying? If she was, why?
“I have only just arrived, witch. No one has yet given me a purpose or come to me as the one who summoned me from hell. I arrived, and the only being here is you.” I tried to smile, tried to appear charming. Since I was a war demon, I’m pretty sure I failed on both those counts. “Release me from your circle. Tell me what task you want me to perform, and release me. I could do so much for you. Together we could be powerful. A witch like you…a witch like you could find more than power in my arms.”
The witch stared at me for a moment, a faint blush on her cheeks. Then she turned to leave.
“What is it you want me to do?” I shouted, feeling a bit panicked for the first time in my very long life. This was not the way these things usually went. I was fairly patient as demons go, but I felt very uneasy being trapped in a circle—even if that circle seemed unusually spacious.
The witch hesitated, glancing at me over her shoulder. She muttered something that sounded like, “My mother will kill me.”
“I want you to leave.” She said the words as if they were a spell. I felt the energy snap around my skin, then dissipate.
“Then return me to hell,” I snarled, my interest in her fading. “Banish me. Send me back. At the very least let me out of this damned circle!”
“I…I will be back.” She took another step away. “I cannot let you out, not until I know who summoned you and why. I need to research, to find out some information. Then I will be back.”
She left.
And two hundred years later, she still hadn’t returned.
