Vengeful Darkness, page 1
Vengeful Darkness
The Shadow Demons Saga, Book 11
Sarra Cannon
Copyright © 2021 by Sarra Cannon
All rights reserved.
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Cover by Ravven
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To Kelly.
This book probably wouldn’t exist without your friendship and support. I love you so much.
A special thank you to Miranda Hunter and family, also, for supporting my sister, Kris Cannon, in her NYC Marathon win! A character inside is named for you in thanks.
The Power Of The Diamond
The High Priestess
Amber firelight flickered across the onyx walls, casting shadows inside of shadows.
With a fingertip, I traced the ancient symbol carved into my Book of Shadows and admired the time-weathered pages.
Inside, I’d written thousands of spells. Spells powerful enough to shake the very foundation of the world.
Centuries of carefully-laid plans, disrupted by a child.
I would not underestimate Harper Brighton again.
No, this time, I would deal with her myself.
The mistake I’d made thus far was in assuming she was nothing more than a nuisance. I realized now, however, that I could use her. After watching her and the way she reacted, the way she loved, all it would take was a few simple calculations. A few easy manipulations. And she would not only take herself out of the game, she would also help me achieve my ultimate goal.
After all this time, it was finally coming to pass.
I opened my Book of Shadows and dipped my diamond-tipped pen into the shadowy ink.
Where to begin?
How could I put an end to her little liberation movement while torturing her spirit along the way? She did, after all, need to pay for her sins. She pretended to be an innocent, as if every horror she’d committed was in the name of freedom and love. But what about those I loved?
Or did she imagine someone like me incapable of love?
My hands curled into fists, sparks like tiny exploding stars bouncing off the desk in front of me as I thought of Harper’s latest act of wickedness.
Of the mess I’d found in this room the night they had attacked my amethyst priestess.
I’d told Illana opening a portal directly to this room with so many of their allies around was too risky. I thought I’d made it clear that Harper was to be incapacitated and taken to my citrine priestess, Alexandra.
Hazel’s torture and brainwashing had not been strong enough, but I had no doubt Alexandra’s particular brand of hell would be enough to break even the strongest of wills.
Harper would have been taken care of, and their entire resistance would have fallen apart in the wake of her insanity and death.
Why had Illana gone against my orders?
Foolish girl.
Always desperate to please me. To gain favor above her station.
I admired her ambition, but I would not mourn her for her disobedience. Death did not eliminate her usefulness.
I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing, slowly allowing my fists to unfurl and calm.
When I had regained control, I straightened my shoulders and admired the ritual room, taking comfort in the sight of my greatest achievements.
No one truly understood the magnitude of what I’d accomplished here. They all believed the Order of Shadows was my end game, but humans and demons had always been short sighted. That was part of why they were so easily manipulated.
I was just thankful Illana’s disobedience had not managed to harm this room.
All my hopes and plans for the future relied on this room. I’d spent lifetimes creating this place and searching for a way to take the power that should rightfully have been mine.
Magda’s bombs were not kind, even when they were made with her rubies.
But combined with my diamonds? The smallest one could blow up an entire community, if placed in the right location.
I had, of course, placed warding and strengthening spells on this ritual room long ago, but there was nothing here to protect Illana from the blast. I had lost so much over the years, and before it was all over, I would lose even more.
It was inevitable.
The paper under my palm crinkled slightly as I smoothed my hand over the words.
Lifetimes of experimentation and sacrifice. Centuries of planning.
And here I was, finally ready to take what I deserved. I was so close now, I could taste it.
The power of the diamond on the pedestal in the center of the ritual room infused the area with energy so intense, my skin tingled. Millions of lights pulsed and flickered deep inside it.
I had created that.
Me.
Someone the Court had tossed aside long ago.
Unworthy they had called me. Impure.
Dangerous.
But they would soon know my vengeance, and all these years of work would finally show them just how important and powerful I could be.
Maybe it was good someone like Harper had come along. I’d grown complacent these past two hundred years.
Once I’d figured out the right process of collecting and storing energy, it had all been too easy.
The human witches were greedy for power and easily manipulated, while even the once-great demon king himself had practically handed me his kingdom on a platter.
My power proved too great for these weak beings, but where was the glory without the challenge?
Harper had made it fun for me again, and though I had dreamed of her torture and destruction, I had also spent time daydreaming about recruiting her to my side.
After all, what might she have been capable of if she’d taken over her role as Prima? Joined with a rare and powerful demon like Aerden, she could have been an incredibly powerful asset to me.
But in the end, she was too clever. Too rebellious.
Too determined not to be used by the Order of Shadows.
I smiled.
She had no idea just how useful she had been to me, despite her protests.
I turned to admire the diamond in the center of the room, its light glowing brighter with each new day.
If it hadn’t been for Harper killing off my sapphire priestess, I might never have realized my mistake. I might have overlooked the one thing that could have still managed to put an end to my plans.
An acceptable loss for such a powerful realization.
Now, I was invincible.
I closed my eyes, turning away from the diamond pedestal and the pentacle carved onto the floor.
No. It was that kind of thinking that had nearly ended it all for me once before.
I was not invincible.
Not yet.
But I was powerful beyond anything they’d imagined. If I had wanted to, I could have killed them all at any moment, but Harper still had a part to play in all of this.
The other princess, too. Lazalea. They would both die before I was finished, of course, but I needed them for one last purpose. They all believed love would be the one thing that saved them, but in the end, the twins’ love for these girls would be the death of them.
I would make certain of that.
And just because I couldn’t yet end their lives didn’t mean I couldn’t torture them along the way.
They thought I’d put my full force toward finding and putting an end to their Demon Liberation Movement. To their Resistance.
Ha.
I’d barely even spent a moment of my attention on their efforts. I’d left their fate up to my priestesses, never dreaming it would be an even match.
It turns out many of my priestesses were unworthy of their power, but it was no matter to me now. They would all be dead soon, anyway.
Harper and her friends had been fighting with everything they had for a very long time, and I’d barely lifted a finger against them.
I was done with that now.
I ran my hand along the most recently-filled page of my Book of Shadows, going over the plans again in my head.
It was all too perfect.
The twins heading for the storm, searching for answers to questions they’d not even yet thought to ask. Lea looking for answers about the Stone Guardians I’d placed beneath her city, having no clue just how much danger she and her precious kingdom were truly in.
And Harper?
Harper naively believing that if she could save poor Magda from the Order and release the ruby gates, she’ll have turned the tide against me. That all of this could be over.
She still foolishly believed my power came from the Order of Shadows. That I was nothing without those witches.
But like everything in my life, the Order was just another tool. Another way to get what I needed.
And all of them, in their own way, playing the roles I’d set out for them.
They couldn’t see I was the one placing them on the board like chess pieces in my centuries-old game.
Or that I was about to change the trajectory of their lives forever.
Because I wasn’t playing with my hands tied behind my back, anymore.
They were so eager to know who the High Priestess truly was?
Well, it was about tim
More Than Okay
Harper
I stepped into the garden of white roses and was instantly transported to the human world and the beauty of Brighton Lake.
The last time I was here, it looked like it always had. Dense forest. The lake with its rickety wooden dock. Roses in full bloom year-round.
Other than the roses, there had never been anything to make this place appear special or magical in any way, but in the past two weeks, everything had changed.
A fifteen-foot perimeter had been cleared around the rose portal and a gray stone wall now surrounded the area. It was currently only four feet tall, but it was going up quickly.
A wide gap had been left on one side of the wall where a gate would soon go up, and beside that, a small building had been erected. A “command station” Cormac had called it.
A wisp of white smoke gathered in front of me, shifting into the form of a tall, dark-skinned demon with broad shoulders and a confident, strong stance.
“Princess,” he said with a bow. “I didn’t realize you were coming to visit today. We’ve got the wall up, as you can see, but we’ve still got some work to do. Particularly on the dome.”
“No need to bow,” I said, still extremely uncomfortable with the idea of demons who were sometimes more than a hundred years older looking to me as their leader.
It might have been the role my father intended for me to have, but I still hadn’t fully stepped into it yet. Besides, my half-sister Angela seemed to be doing a fine job of it. She stood with Willow, our primary shielder who had done so much to create and maintain the dome, over by the command center. The two of them gestured toward the sky and shook their heads.
That wasn’t a good sign.
They’d had a lot of trouble trying to make the magical dome work here in the human world. Any time they got it up and running, the magic just pulled the life right out of the trees and surrounding area before it eventually fizzled out and dropped the shield.
Maintaining the power in the demon world was relatively easy once you got it up and running, because the air was literally infused with the power of magic.
Here on the human side, though, the magic needed fuel, so to speak.
So far, we hadn’t been able to figure it out, but I had faith that it would come together.
We had to do something to fortify every entrance to the city and to make sure we were as safe as possible against future attacks. After killing two priestesses, making friends with another, and coming so very close to killing yet a fourth out of the five main leaders of the Order of Shadows, we were all fully expecting amethyst, citrine, and possibly even the High Priestess to come at us with a major attack any day now.
And we were going to be ready for them.
Fortifying the rose portal was just one step of many, and I’d been grateful for the work and the plans. It kept my mind off Jackson at sea.
“Thank you for all your work out here, Cormac,” I said. “You’ve done so much in just a short period of time. How are you feeling about your new job as head of security?”
It had taken some time to decide who to trust with the job. I’d conducted many interviews, and it was no surprise to me that Cormac’s name kept coming up whenever I asked my guards who they thought was most trustworthy, intelligent, and capable when it came to taking on a job like this.
He’d been one of Gregory’s Lieutenants for many years, leading a squad of a hundred guards, and every time I’d spoken with him or needed him, I’d been impressed with his confidence and ease.
Cormac was a demon, but he was mated with a human witch who had come to the domed city as a refugee when my father was still alive. Together, they had three little shadowlings, and after having a few meals with them as a family, it was easy to see their home was filled with love and kindness.
Plus, it was obvious after just one visit to his house in the domed city that Cormac had taken an interest in finding ways to combine human technology with demon magic. He’d called it a hobby, but I’d been in awe of what he was able to do, like measuring the remaining power of a particular charged crystal with a program he’d coded on his laptop. I’d never seen anyone marry demon and human technologies in this way, but I instantly recognized it as something we could use to keep our kingdom safe.
Besides, it was just really cool.
All he’d had to do after that was agree to let my friend Franki question him with her father’s dagger. It was a very powerful dagger imbued with a spell that made it impossible for anyone being questioned near it to tell a lie.
It was, unsurprisingly, called the Dagger of Truth, and though Franki warned me that obsessive use of it could drive a person insane over time, I had definitely put it to some use already in my own castle.
After Illana’s betrayal, I wasn’t going to take anyone’s trustworthiness for granted.
I’d tested everyone on the council or in a commanding position, including Magda, who I noticed had just come through the rose portal and was talking with some of the witches near the gate. She waved and smiled, and I waved back.
“Honestly, I love this job,” Cormac said, loosening up a bit. A wide smile broke out across his face. “Like I said, we still have a lot to figure out, but I am really having fun with the tech and all the experimentation we’ve been able to do out here so far. Do you want to see the command center? It’s coming along better than I could have dreamed.”
His excitement was contagious.
“Of course,” I said. “Show me everything.”
Demons and witches worked together inside the small wall, adding wards and protection spells. They all waved or nodded as we walked by, but when Angela caught sight of me, she only scowled.
I held up a hand to indicate I’d be over there in just a minute. I really did want to get a good look inside the command center.
And yeah, I had kind of been avoiding her for the past few days.
We both wanted to keep our kingdom safe and put an end to the Order of Shadows, but we apparently had very different ideas on how to go about that. Angela held to the ideals of our father, believing that our best work was done in fortifying our domed city and protecting ourselves from the Order, while I believed it was better to go on the offensive, attacking the Order before they had a chance to attack us.
We had Magda on our side, which meant we could go after the citrine priestess where she lived. Attack her with as much force as we could gather and put an end to another gate.
Angela didn’t see it that way, though. She said it was just inviting more trouble.
I really didn’t want to go through that whole conversation again, so I just waved and followed Cormac into the command center.
He hadn’t been kidding about the changes he’d made in just a couple of days.
There were eight large computer screens on one side of the small room and two laptops, each cycling through camera feeds from different locations like Winterhaven, the entrance to the domed city, and many other important locations.
“My team and I installed surveillance cameras at every location we believed might possibly be important to monitor, including Blackwood.” He handed me a piece of paper. “I’ve written down all the locations we’re monitoring for you here. If you have any other requests, I can get a team out there right away.”
“How are you able to control and monitor all these different places from so far away?” I asked.
“I’m using a mix of human and demon tech,” he said, going into a detailed explanation of things that went completely over my head. “Do you need me to go over the schematics with you?”
“I trust you,” I said, laughing. “What about these crystals? Are they connected to the laptops and screens?”
The other half of the surveillance desk was covered in a series of colorful crystal points, varying in size. Larger crystals maybe a foot tall and six or so inches thick were lined up in the back, with several rows in front sizing down to small, pea-sized round crystals embedded in the front of the stone panel.
“This is my crowning achievement so far, and it’s something I’ve been working on for a very long time,” Cormac said, practically bouncing on his toes with excitement. “Here, watch this.”
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