Page 49 of Deal with the Devil

“So don’t youeverfucking threaten me like that again.” Hellen trembled as she slowly climbed to her feet.

“I won’t,” Knox swore, his own hands glowing in tandem with hers. Their contract was mended in that moment. Hellen swearing to never harm him in exchange that he would never harm her. They’d never needed that addendum before…but then again, no one had ever infiltrated Knox’s world like this. He didn’t know who to trust anymore.

“I’m going to go see what other bodies might be lingering. It’s safe to say…Buttons works for our vampire friend.”

“She’s worked for me for years,” Knox murmured.

Silence filled the office for a moment.

“So, either she was bought recently…” Hellen swallowed audibly.

“Or this has been a long time coming.” Knox straightened, storming to Amelia’s side and offering a hand. She took it weakly. He felt sympathetic for her, and he’d feel bad about being rough later, but Knox couldn’t let her stay in the casino another moment. There was no telling if there was a secondary plot to snatch her as well. “You’re going home.”

“What? And leave you here by yourself?” Amelia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “No way.”

“Amelia,” he warned.

“What if sending me home by myself is what they want?” Amelia cocked a brow.

Knox’s left eye twitched.She had a point.With a snarl, he ripped around and stormed toward the door. He held it open for Hellen and glared at Amelia. “Fine, but if it gets worse, you go through a one-way portal home, am I understood?”

He saw the fight in her face, but it flickered to understanding. With a sigh, she nodded. Knox took her hand and ripped her through the door. They stormed down the halls. Everyone was buzzing back and forth. Knox felt the world slow down for them. Waves of people rushed past them, but the pair walked at half speed. The casino was a flutter, screams falling on muffled ears as they reached the hall where Gael was meant to be. A massive hole where the door once was, steaming and crusted with necromantic energy.

What has happened to his empire? Knox looked around the halls, finding the two guards as parts littered across the ground. Hellen was holding the head of one of them, staring in horror at the trail of blood.

“Knox?” Amelia breathed in his ear.

“Has anyone found them?” Knox held up his stone.

“No sir, they broke out through the employee exit.” Zavros’s voice filled the rock.

Knox opened a portal beside him with an arm circle, tapping his cane against the purple film. It lit up with hissing magic, ripping open the air to his left. Into the middle of the haunted forest, he led Amelia and him and closed the portal.

“What are we doing out here?” Amelia glanced around the trees; eyebrows furrowed.

“Something I can’t do in the city proper. I’m not supposed to do it at all within city limits…but Lord Blightwood will have to forgive me.” Knox handed Amelia his cane. Stepping away from her, a purple flame erupted around him in a circle. Lines exploded to life and the area filled with magic. Amelia clutched the cane to her chest, eyes hardened on the horizon around them. Dead leaves and branches turned to ash, floating up into the air around them.

Soon everything was covered in a purple mist as Knox summoned a new portal. Like claws against thick fabric, a hole in the air formed before him. Trees nearby shriveled up and caved in. Nothing but blackened husks as he fed his magic with the very life around them. Amelia met his gaze once, eyebrows nearly up to her blue hair.

“I did warn you…I’m not all contracts.” With a snap of his arm to the right, the air was ripped open fully. Like seeing into the kitchen window of a familiar witch’s hut. An evil cackle filled his ears. She stepped into view, his old crone. Eyes a putrid yellow, teeth rotten, and gums a puss-filled green, the Witch of the Woods stepped through the haze toward the portal.

“Knox, sweet child…what do I owe the pleasure?” Her vision melted away to a beautiful woman. Long, flowing onyx tendrils, a fitted bodice with satin fabric around her shapely body, and a belt full of potion bottles, his maker leaned into the portal like a windowpane and leaned her chin onto her palm.

“I want Buttons’ eyes.” Knox nodded to the shelf behind Persephone, the Witch of the Woods, a god of the nightmare realm.

“Mmm, and what do I get in exchange for them? Your eyes?” She booped his nose sweetly.

“I’ll feed on her soul, shortly after I take back her eyes.”

Persephone grew in the windowsill. Body elongated, taking up the full space of the cabin in the woods, hunching to fit within the frame. Face pulled long, cheeks hollow, and eyes sunken in, she became ghoulish and paler than death. “A deal.”

She plucked the jar filled with two floating eyes and handed it through the portal. Her hand grew thrice between her realm of Nightmares and King’s Fall. The jar was dropped softly into his hands before the spindly fingers slipped back through the portal. Madness swam in his maker’s eyes as she watched him through the steadily closing portal. The last image was of her unblinking, yellow eyes with swirling irises.

Amelia stumbled to the edge of his magic flames. “Knox, what are you doing now?”

“You wanted to stay by my side,” he barked, glancing up from the jar in his hands. A glass orb with a simple, tin lid that screwed on. Inside were two round eyeballs with long, gory stems that floated in the nearly milky water. He brought the jar up so it could see him.So that Buttons could see him.“This is what it means to be mine, Amelia Armstrong. This is what I’m capable of.”

He slammed the jar down to the forest floor. A scream ripped through the trees. Buttons appeared in a burst of plum flames at his feet. Her eyes back in her eye sockets. Knox loomed over her as she scrambled about inside his spell circle. The flames went out around him with a hiss. She scrambled, hand over foot, away from him.

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