Astaroth’s face hurt, and his brain was foggy. He stared at the angry witch standing over him, trying to figure out where he knew her from. She clearly knew him, after all, and she didn’t seem to like him much, despite having saved him from whoever that Moloch fellow was.
He tried to remember anything prior to the past few minutes. He had a jumbled impression of vaguely familiar faces, the flicker of firelight . . . and nothing else. Just the residual emotional echo of some horror.
Who was this woman? Who was the demon who had punched Astaroth in the face before threatening to skewer him alive? Why did his head feel like it was stuffed with cotton?
“What do you mean, where are you and who am I?” The witch crossed her arms, displaying a pair of impressive biceps. She was tall and lean, with sun-kissed white skin, long blond hair tied up in a ponytail, and a thunderous expression. She was wearing a pair of daisy-patterned leggings and a shirt that said Sweat Like a Girl. The cheap fabric of her leggings made Astaroth shudder with distaste, though he could admit it highlighted her arse in a compelling way.
“I can’t remember anything,” Astaroth said, rubbing his aching temples. His head pounded, and not just from being punched by Moloch. “I don’t know how I got here or where I am.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the woman said. “Can demons get amnesia?”
He reached up to touch one of his horns. He knew they were black, the way he knew his name was Astaroth and that spandex was repellent in most contexts. But although he had a general sense of self, he had no idea what that self had been up to before the preceding minutes. “I suppose they can,” he said, rubbing his forehead with his palms. “Lucifer, my head hurts.” Pain pulsed inside his skull, punctuated by sharp, fiery stabs.
The witch shifted from foot to foot, looking between him and the entrance to the alleyway. “You really don’t recognize me?”
A thought emerged from the chaos in his head. “Are we lovers?” He had a vivid image of her crushing him between her muscular thighs, though he couldn’t tell if that was a memory or wishful thinking.
“No!” She looked horrified.
Astaroth winced. All right, not lovers. His gaze dropped to her thighs again. “Pity.”
She snapped her fingers. “Eyes up, asshole.”
Astaroth returned his focus to her face, blinking when his vision wavered. “Are we enemies, then?”
Her laugh sounded wild. “Yes, you could say that.”
“Ah.” He was off to a terrific start. “And your name is . . . ?”
“Calladia.” She dug her fingers into the top of her ponytail, messing it up, then groaned. “Hecate, what am I supposed to do?”
Astaroth forced himself to stand, biting down a whimper as he put weight on a sore leg. Clearly something terrible had happened to him before Moloch had decided to deliver a beating. “I suppose you have the advantage, since I’ve no idea what’s happening,” he said. “I’ve got to warn you, if you try to murder me, I won’t cooperate.”
Standing helped the pain somewhat, although the fresh surge of dizziness was unwelcome. Upright, he could recall that people had tried to murder him before. He had a flash of memory from one of the Jacobite uprisings or another, back when he’d dabbled in mortal warfare. A troll had swung a mace at him, knocking him down and leaving a dent in his favorite breastplate.
Why could he remember fighting in a Jacobite uprising but not arriving on this street in the here and now? What had he been up to since the 1700s? It was clearly a long time past then, but while he recognized various modern features—neon lights, the flicker of a television from a nearby window, the blink of aircraft lights far overhead—he wasn’t sure of his place among them. It was like receiving a script for a play that contained nothing but descriptions of props and staging, and Astaroth had just been shoved onstage to perform an unknown part for a hostile audience.
Calladia was pacing in tight switchbacks. Step step step turn, step step step turn. “Damn it,” she said, kicking a pebble into the brick wall of the alley. “I should leave you here.”
That was better than the alternative of her murdering him, not that he could see where she might hide a weapon in that ensemble. She could perform a spell to smack him into the wall the way she had Moloch though. “Ah, where is here?” he asked.
“Glimmer Falls.”
The name was vaguely familiar. He mouthed the words, begging them to spark a memory.
They did not.
Was Glimmer Falls where he resided? He’d bounced between various locations in Europe for centuries, though the details of where he’d lived grew hazy after the American Revolution. What a time that had been! Masquerading as a redcoat, he’d played all sides, manipulating countless souls out of magically gifted soldiers and commanders desperate for victory.
Given the accents surrounding him, including Calladia’s, he was once again in America. He couldn’t imagine having purchased a town house here, rather than in England or on the Continent, but perhaps his preferences had changed over the years.
He tried to think past the late 1700s, but it was like hitting an impenetrable wall in his mind. Even the centuries that came before that were foggy, available only in patchwork pieces. A country manor filled with blurry-faced people in formal clothes, a peaceful afternoon lying in a field while sheep ambled nearby, the glint of sunlight on bloody steel as he skewered the troll who had dented his armor. Even those images were hard to fit into a sequence, but at least something of his history had survived whatever trauma he’d endured. Hopefully more would return soon.
“Do I live in Glimmer Falls?” he asked, giving up on shaking the answer loose.
“Definitely not.” Calladia’s mouth twisted. “Moloch is going to come back, isn’t he?”
“Stands to reason, given how vehemently he dislikes me.” Astaroth’s forehead furrowed. “I seem to have a lot of enemies.”
The witch snorted. “Shocking.” Then she shook her head. “This is a terrible idea,” she muttered, “but I can’t fight you when you’re incapacitated. It wouldn’t be fair.”
The sentiment surprised Astaroth. “You care about fairness?” Moloch certainly hadn’t. Astaroth suspected he didn’t either.
Hang it, why could he remember the American War of Independence, but not the demon who wanted to kill him?
Calladia nibbled her lower lip and looked over her shoulder toward where Moloch had disappeared. “Look, whatever’s going on, I don’t want to wait for that dickhead to come back.” She pointed a stern finger at him. “But if you try anything funny, I will explode your testicles.”
Astaroth winced at the graphic threat. “Noted.”