Page 26 of Rites of Passage

“No one’s going to arrest you.” Major Schuman glanced at Mae and Nikolai, her expression neutral. “Ms. Jin and Mr. Stanisic are here to ask you a few questions.”

Her gaze skimmed over Vlad where he leaned casually against the wall next to the door, her face darkening for an instant. Having a Russian mafia prince inside a U.S. army facility was evidently rubbing her the wrong way.

Shock widened Gregory and Agnes’s eyes.

“You’re—you’re the Witch Queen?!” Gregory stammered. His gaze dropped to Brimstone. “Then, that’s—?!”

“Yeah.” Mae scratched her cheek lightly. “Just call me Mae.”

The coven healers in the room exchanged nervous glances.

Mae saw Vlad smirk out of the corner of her eye. He’d told her she should get used to being revered. She swallowed a sigh and sat on the edge of Agnes’s bed. Brimstone plopped down next to her, his tail swishing across the floor.

“I know you’ve been through a lot,” she told Agnes quietly. “And you may not wish to revisit what the Dark Council did to you. But it would really help us if we knew what happened to you.”

Agnes hesitated before nodding, determination brightening her gaze. “I’ll tell you everything I remember.”

The witch started talking, faltering at first. She spoke of how she’d been walking home three weeks ago after a shift at a clinic that catered to magic users, when a van pulled up beside her and a group of men had dragged her into the back. Her dog familiar had bitten two of them before they’d injured him and left him behind.

“The next thing I knew, I woke up in this underground facility.” Agnes shuddered. “To be honest, it was more a cave than anything. From what I glimpsed whenever they opened our cell, there were a lot of people being kept prisoner on several galleries. Our jailers barely fed us and pumped us full of drugs to keep us docile.” Her face grew haunted. “Every day, they dragged some of us out and took us to this—this room. It was on the lowest level of the cave and had a white door. There was this weird antiseptic smell whenever it opened. Like it was some kind of lab or hospital operating room. Half the people that went in there never made it out alive. Those who did became…monsters.”

Mae’s skin prickled unpleasantly at the witch’s words. An image of the first demon she had ever met and slayed flitted before her eyes.

Was it like that for him too? Or did he go into that room willingly?

“Did you ever see someone who looked out of place?” Jared asked in a hard voice. “Someone who wasn’t a magic user and might have been a scientist?”

Mae glanced at the NYPD lieutenant as he stepped forward, a frown on his face. He’d told them that the Immortal Societies had suspected for some time now that one of their own was working with the Dark Council to make modified demons. As well as being the Immortals’ liaison with the U.S. Special Affairs bureau, Jared had been assigned the task of finding out who that person was and bringing them in.

Agnes clutched the sheets. “I—I did. The day they took me into that place. They gave me a powerful sedative so I wouldn’t fight them. I couldn’t make out the details of the room. But I remember him. A man in a white coat. He strapped me to a table and injected me with that strange serum. He…he looked like an angel.” Tears bloomed in the witch’s eyes. She wiped them away angrily. “He told me I would be okay. That it wouldn’t hurt.” Her voice broke. “He lied. When that woman opened that rift and forced that thing into my body, I wished I were dead.”

Gregory’s face crumbled. He stroked his sister’s back and gave her some water to sip, his eyes glistening.

Mae’s blood had turned to ice. “Woman? Can you describe her?!”

Agnes blinked at her urgent tone.

Nikolai pressed a warning hand on Mae’s shoulder.

“Was she blonde? Pretty, with gray eyes?” he asked quietly.

Mae’s pulse quickened as she fished her cell out of her jeans and brought up a picture of Rose Blake.

She showed it to Agnes. “Was this her?”

Agnes’s eyes grew round. “Yes!”

Mae’s chest tightened. Brimstone whined and pressed his flank against her leg.

“Who is she?” Agnes asked tremulously.

“She was—” Mae paused and clenched her teeth. “Sheismy best friend. Now she's possessed by Barquiel, an Archduke of Hell.”

Agnes drew a sharp breath.

Schuman shifted, her unease plain to see despite her impassive face. Even though they’d been dealing with Immortals and magic users for decades, the idea of Heaven and Hell and their respective inhabitants actually existing didn’t seem to sit well with the U.S. government.

Agnes wavered before reaching out and touching the back of Mae’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

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