Page 11 of Warmongers and Wands
This was better than those romance novels. This was better than a porno. This was way better than that vibrator in my bedside table, and the guy hadn’t even kissed me. Had I died and gone to heaven? Because I might totally be okay with that if my leg suddenly miraculously healed and this guy started serving me and doing as I asked.
Wait, who was Adelaide?
“I’m Bronwyn Perkins, not Adelaide.” I held out my hand, the one not holding the empty stew bowl. “Not sure if that makes a difference or not on you serving me. Although that sort of thing might need to wait until my leg heals. If you’re still interested. Because if you’re not, that’s okay. It’s not like anyone else is. Interested, that is.”
Crap. I needed to just shut up. I was making a huge fool out of myself. The guy hadn’t made any move to shake my hand, so I let it fall onto the pelt-that-I-hoped-wasn’t-werewolf.
“Bronwyn Perkins?” He shook his head, a bemused expression on his face. “Of course. Humans do not live for very long, at least those not bonded to a demon. Two hundred years would be too long for Adelaide to still be alive. So, you are…”
“Probably a great, great, great, grand-niece or something, if Adelaide’s last name was Perkins,” I told him. “Is she the one who summoned you?”
I suddenly had a whole romantic tragedy running through my head of a young woman in a dress and corset, summoning a demon out in the woods and vowing to come back, only to get run over by a wagon or hit by a falling tree before she could return. And here the demon sat, for two hundred years, pining for his lost…summoner.
Okay, I clearly had been reading too many novels. That, and the fact that the only demon I’d ever met was bumping uglies with my sister, made me assume Hadur and Adelaide were some kind of Romeo and Juliet. For all I knew, Adelaide was a wart-nosed ninety-year-old witch who’d summoned Hadur with murder on her mind and had stroked out before being able to release him from the circle and send him off to kill whoever she felt needed killing.
“I had believed Adelaide was the witch who brought me from hell. I was summoned, and when I appeared, she was the only witch present. But she claimed that she had not been the one to summon me. She demanded I reply to questions I did not know the answer to, then left, vowing to come back. I never saw her again.”
Yep. Definitely Romeo and Juliet, even if Adelaide had been ninety and wart-nosed. Hey, elderly disfigured witches deserved love, too.
“So, you’ve been here alone for two hundred years, give or take a few decades?”
For a brief second, he smiled, and I realized that was the first time I’d seen him do so.
“Yes. Alone aside from Diebin and other beings of the forest.”
“Werewolves?” I stroked the pelt with tentative fingers.
“Just the one. They don’t come to this section of the mountain. They believe there is evil here.” Again with the brief smile. “They are right.”
“And you killed the werewolf?”
He shrugged. “The werewolf was very disagreeable.”
Okay, I kinda understood that. The werewolves were on the whole a disagreeable bunch. And if he were to be trapped here for hundreds of years, alone, I could see he might be a bit pissed at having some jackwad come into his home and be a total asshole. Still…
“So how big is this circle you’re trapped in?” I mentally tried to calculate the distance from my wrecked truck to this cabin. It wasn’t easy since it had been raining and I’d been in pain, and he’d been carrying me.
“The circle diameter is approximately two hundred feet.”
I blinked. That was less than three quarters of an acre. Admittedly, there were prison cells smaller than that, but to be cooped up in such a small area for over two hundred years…
“You built the house? And—” I glanced at the pot over the fire—“smelted iron? On less than an acre?”
“I did build the house and some of the furniture. I also hunt animals who venture into the confines of the circle. Diebin has provided the other items for me.”
I eyed the raccoon. Yeah, he was a big boy, but how the hell had he managed to drag a heavy iron pot through the woods? Guess I never should underestimate the thievery skills and strength of a raccoon.
“Diebin…is he some sort of familiar?”
“That’s probably the closest term for what our relationship is. We have a partnership. I have granted him eternal life, enhanced strength, speed, and understanding, and he serves me.”
I wasn’t going to delve into how similar that sounded to the relationship he was pledging to me. Cassie had told me Lucien could extend her life, provide immortality. That was one of the benefits of a witch bonding with a demon—that and enhanced magical ability. But I assumed there had to be more. I assumed that there needed to be a connection between the witch and demon, not just a swipe-right if you think he’s cute thing. Cassie and Lucien…well, it was still pretty early in their relationship, but they were obviously in love.
I’d totally do this guy, but no matter how hot he was, I wasn’t going to jump into a “I’ll serve you forever” thing with both feet.
“My sister Adrienne talks to animals.” I looked around at all the items in the cabin that Diebin must have pilfered from town. No doubt ninety percent of our theft problem could be laid at this guy’s paws. “She can call animals to her, get them to do her bidding, communicate with them. It makes all the shifters in town super nervous, because their animal side is susceptible to her influence.”
Adrienne spent more time outside of Accident then she did inside, probably for those very reasons. Every now and then someone would call her to take care of the non-vampire bats in their attic, or a wasp nest in their eaves, but most of her pest and wildlife removal customers tended to be outside of the town wards.
