Welcome to the Kali Sweet Chronicles. Sweet Malice is the fifth book in the Kali Sweet Urban Fantasy series and will be released to retailers in February 2025. I’ll release a chapter twice a month here in my Magic Bites Membership, and I look forward to reading your comments! *Please note that these are UNEDITED and some story elements may change before the official book release in February. Enjoy!
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Sweet Malice, Kali Sweet Urban Fantasy Series
©2024 Misty Evans
Chapter Thirteen
I stormed out of the room, the demonologist yelling behind me.
“Where are you going?” he called, running to catch up. The dog trailed last in our congo line. No time for the elevator, I raced for the stairs.
“Where are we?” His voice fell farther behind. “You can’t leave me here. She’ll—”
The stairwell door slammed shut, cutting him off.
By the time the dog and I burst into Damon’s office, I was breathing hard. A packed crowd greeted us. Damon sat at his large mahogany desk surrounded by Cole, Rad, Yasmine, Kirill, the vitiums, Tabriss, Di, and Neve. Last but not least was Dru. Who’d called him?
Total relief flooded Rad’s face. He pushed through the group to embrace me. “There you are.”
I wanted to take a second to enjoy that embrace, but there wasn’t time. “Hold that thought.”
“Milena!” Di cheered. “You found her!”
The dog rushed to her. She scooped it up. “Where you have been?” Her voice took on the tone one used with a baby. “There’s Mama’s good little girl.”
“You were worried about the dog and not me?” I asked.
A slim, ringed hand waved me off. “You can take care of yourself.”
“You shouldn’t have named her,” I remarked. “Damon won’t let you keep her.”
“Milly isn’t going anywhere,” she said in that baby-talk voice. She rubbed the dog under the chin. “Are you? You’re my little sweetheart.”
The demonologist lumbered into the room, panting. All eyes went to him, and he stumbled back a foot. “What in Heaven and Hell…?”
I yelled over the rumble of voices that broke out. “Listen.” I slid past the others to get to Damon. “It was Michael who snatched me, which means he can access this place.”
Damon’s brow furrowed. “That’s not possible.” His gaze snagged on Volante. “How did you get your whip back?”
“Long story, not important. If Michael has a connection to something—or someone—already inside here, he can access all of us.”
The crowd fell silent. For a heartbeat, Damon didn’t so much as breathe. Then he shot to his feet. “Tabriss.”
While I wanted a reason to toss her out on her angelic ass, I shook my head. “She’s been here for months, and he only tried it today. The artifacts—remember the way she reacted to them? How she said she could sense him?”
“The pouch nullifies their magic.”
“Not when they’re close to Michael’s sword,” the demonologist said between gasps. “But you don’t have that, so…”
“Who is that?” Damon scowled.
“Frankel Bahar, demonologist and Fallen,” I said. I motioned to Damon. “Frank, this is Damon, archdemon and head of the Institute.”
Frank blinked behind his glasses. “For real?”
Damon didn’t oblige to reply. “This is the Frankenstein monster you told me about?”
His tone suggested he was unimpressed. “No, this is the real Bahar,” It told him. “The one Cole and I encountered was a fake.”
“Who created the fake?” Kirill asked.
Frank adjusted his glasses, his breathing resuming a normal cadence. “Michael and Lilith.”
A cacophony of questions erupted, and I had to whistle to shut everyone up. “We’ll get back to that in a minute. Right now, we’ve got to get those artifacts out of here.”
Damon was already in motion. “All of you—out! Now.” He didn’t often use his archdemon voice, and its power reverberated through the air, propelling all of us toward the door like a gust of wind. “Except you,” he said to me.
My limbs locked in place. I shot Cole a help me look.
He sneered and patted my shoulder on his way by. “Good luck.”
Damn. Frank was the only one left besides me when the door closed.
“You need my help,” he said when we both glared at him in question. “And this…whatever it is…is partially my fault.”
“Because you raised Lilith,” I accused.
He made a head gesture that was neither a yes nor a no. “I was attempting to summon Michael, but I think my resource was tampered with—the ritual was…off.”
Damon motioned for him to turn around. He did, and Damon went to the safe. “Summon him for what?”
“The text I was translating had odd forms of angelic symbols. I wanted him to explain them to me.”
“You don’t mess around, do you?” I asked. Nabbing an archangel was dangerous. “Why him?”
Damon removed the pouch and dropped it like he’d been zapped. He swore in Spanish and shook out his hand. “Something jabbed me.”
I grabbed his hand and examined a puncture wound in the center of his palm. Black blood welled there. “That can’t be good.”
Frank hustled over. “What’s in the container? The artifacts you mentioned?”
I reached for my sword, but it was MIA. I had to use the toe of my boot to flip over the pouch instead. The sharp end of the brooch’s pin had pierced the side and was covered with Damon’s blood. “Better have Kirill treat that,” I said, a sick feeling in my gut.
“You’ve been pricked by a prick,” Frank muttered with a touch of humor. “Don’t mess around with it. I can see the glow of Michael’s essence. Angel mojo is nasty stuff, especially for your kind.”
Pricked by a prick—I couldn’t have said it better myself. “You can see a glow?”
He glanced at me, his thick lenses making his eyes appear bug-like. “Can’t you?”
I shook my head. “I can feel it.” Grabbing Damon’s landline, I buzzed Kirill. He didn’t answer. I pushed several buttons to engage the building-wide PA system. “Kirill, Damon’s office. Now.”
“Stat,” Frank said.
I hung up the phone. “What?”
“He’s a doctor, right? In hospitals, they say, ‘stat.’”
Hiding my eye roll, I muscled my boss into his chair against his will. Inside his bottom desk drawer, I pulled out a blade he hid there in case of unexpected visitors.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Not touching the pouch,” I answered and stabbed the thing with the end of the knife. “Wrap your hand.”
He grabbed a few crumpled napkins from the waste can to staunch the blood.
With the pouch dangling on the blade, I held it out in front of me, moving for the safe’s open door. It was dark inside. “What about the sword?”
Damon rose from his chair and withdrew a velvet bag from the interior roughly the length of the blade with his good hand. “It’s still here.”
Frank slid closer. “Can I see it?”
This time, my response was in unison with my boss’s. “No,” we both said.
His shoulders slumped. “Does it truly burn with a blue flame? I don’t see any glow.”
And I didn’t feel Michael’s magic coming from it. “Verify it’s real,” I said to Damon.
He handed it to me with the bag still on. “It likes you better.”
“The big, bad archdemon doesn’t like angel steel?” I teased.
He glared. “If it’s booby-trapped, I’d rather not die today.”
Oh. “In other words, I’m expendable.”
He rolled a finger in a get on with it motion. “I don’t want it to taste my blood. That’s the only reason.”
It was a good one, but I doubted it was the only one.
I dropped the pouch into the waste can and used my foot to scoot it to the door. I would handle it in a minute.
Carefully, I undid the drawstrings of the bag, the velvet caressing my skin. The blade quivered, and I stopped, letting my magic slip inside and touch it.
It leaped three inches into the air, and I was so startled I barely caught it when it fell. “What was that about?” I groused, even though I didn’t expect either of them to answer.
“Seems happy to see you,” Frank said. “Why do you guys have Michael’s sword, and how did you get it?”
“Later. Right now, I want to ensure it’s still here, and then I have to get those artifacts out of the building.”
No more messing around or taking it slowly. I reached in, grabbed the hilt, and…
Was knocked on my ass when the blade launched itself at me.
I landed on the floor and slid. My head whacked the door just as Kirill swung it open without knocking.
Like a dog who hadn’t seen its master in days, the sword attacked, but not in a vicious manner.
Because it wasn’t Michael’s.
It was the one Cole had given me.
It sank against my chest and purred, rubbing its hilt between my breasts.
“Why are you on the floor?” Kirill peered down at me. “And this better be good—I don’t take orders from you, Kali.”
I managed to stop the sword’s molestation and got to my feet with it in hand. “It’s for Damon, you jackass.”
He glanced at the desk. “What’s wrong with… Oh.”
Damon had passed out in his chair.
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Poor Damon. I hope he’ll be okay. Comment and let me know what you liked about this chapter!