by Lexi Blake
I looked up and saw that Marcus detained Daniel, making sure he didn’t note the exchange between myself and the head of the Council.
“You are exquisite, Mrs. Donovan,” Marini said with a sigh. “I have rarely tasted your like. My own companion pales in comparison.” He stared at Dev with a dark look in his eyes. “Your Highness, if you become bored with our assassin, please consider giving me a call. I find you quite stunning. I would offer the same to you, Mrs. Donovan, if it didn’t go against our laws. Perhaps someday it will not. I must admit, I find it rather distasteful that a six-year fledgling has the sweetest blood here, no matter what he can do.”
Marini walked away and it took everything I had not to pick a fight with that asshole.
Dev was right there in my ear, playing the savvy politician. “It won’t do Daniel any good. It would only get him killed, and we would probably be put in the vampire equivalent of a brothel, and I don’t want to go to a brothel. Well, not like that. If you’re interested, I could arrange a tour.”
“Stop it, Dev. We’re not going to a brothel.” I watched as Daniel made his way to us. I put the encounter with Marini out of my mind because I had a job to do. “It’s time to get serious.”
Taking my hand, Daniel placed a lingering kiss on my lips, and I enjoyed the brief, strong feel of him. For the longest time, Daniel had been the rock I clung to, and it was nice for a moment to be able to hang onto him again.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
I nodded and turned my lips up to Dev’s. He played his part and only slipped me the briefest of tongues. It was very subdued for him. Daniel led the way this time as we formed a little train making our way to the back of the ballroom. I could feel Lucas Halfer’s eyes on me the whole time.
The hallway that led to the privacy rooms was dark, and I wondered what was going on in those rooms. It was so quiet, I commented on it.
“The rooms have noise inhibiting magic on them,” Daniel answered. “Otherwise it could get quite loud.”
Demons aren’t known for being the tenderest of lovers. I realized there were also a lot of unattached vampires who brought their human lovers with them. The term lover, it should be noted, is one I use loosely. While some vampires might enjoy a human and treat them well, the truth is, most are used for sex and blood. When the vampire gets tired of the human, they’re passed around or simply vanish, never to be heard from again. I was certain whatever was going on in those rooms was probably loud, and I was grateful for whoever put the wards on the doors.
Daniel headed for the first available room, but I held him back. He turned and gave me a questioning look.
“I have to find the right room.” I wondered why Stewart had thought I would magically know which room he was in. I looked around, hoping he’d left a note or something. At the third door, I knew where that cheeky bastard was.
I stopped in front of the door numbered sixty-nine.
“Excellent,” Dev said as he opened the door and entered. “My lucky number.”
Stewart was sitting in a chair beside an enormous bed. “I thought you would like it, you naughty faery.”
After Neil was in, Daniel closed the door. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“He’s here to help.” The explanation sounded ridiculous to my own ears.
Dev threw his big body in the middle of the plush bed. He exhaled and looked at me with an invitation in his green eyes.
“Seriously?” I asked him. How could he think about that now?
“Help, Z? He’s here to fuck everything up.” Daniel pointed to Stewart, his head shaking in disapproval.
Dev gestured to some writing on the walls. The walls of the room were decorated with wards and spells, each drawn with what I seriously hoped wasn’t blood. Paint. Maybe demons liked paint. “Those are lust spells, sweetheart. Lust wards. I have no control over it. Can’t you feel it?”
Stewart was putting his two cents in. “I saved her when we were in Arkansas, Your Highness,” Stewart said to Daniel. “Ooops, are you undercover? Do you have a code name?”
“You didn’t save her. You were the reason she was in danger in the first place,” Daniel replied.
“Come on, Zoey, I don’t think I’ll be able to go through with this mission unless I give in to those spells. It’s really quite overwhelming.” Dev laid back, patting the bed beside him. “I’m so hard right now I can’t breathe.”
“Dude, we’re trying to deal with a demon,” Daniel pointed out, ignoring Stewart to complain at Dev. “How horny can you be?”
“Tell me you haven’t thought of what we could do to her? This is a big bed, man, and I bet those drawers over there are just full of toys we probably can’t get on the Earth plane. How many times can we make her come?” Dev asked. “You can’t feel that? Really? Listen, if you’re not interested, why don’t you deal with the demon, and I’ll do what I do best. I’ll handle Zoey.”
Stewart nearly bent over with laughter. “Those are very weak lust spells. They’re really only there for decorative purposes. His magic is all sex, isn’t it? Funny.”
Stewart stopped, and I could tell he was thinking. I didn’t like it when Stewart thought.
“Daniel, he’s the only one who can get us through the right door.” I hoped Stewart would follow me and leave Dev alone. Once I got him out of this room, he would go back to normal, which for Dev was still sex obsessed but not spell struck. “He’s helping us because it hurts Halfer.”
“He really is a sex god,” Stewart said thoughtfully, looking at Dev who had grabbed my hand and was starting to suck on my fingers. “You would think an actual sex god would be interested in the very beautiful bodies in the room. I mean, this meat I’m in gets paid millions for his body. The king over there is terribly hot in a dark, violent way, and don’t forget my poor little zombie puppy. God, just looking at him makes my mouth water. Yet our Green Man only has eyes for the girl.”
Daniel exhaled a frustrated breath as Dev started to tell me all the things we still hadn’t done. He jumped up and put a quick fist through the charm on the wall that controlled the lust level.
Dev stopped and shook off his previous haze. “Thanks. Umm, I guess the underworld has found my weakness. I tried so hard to hide it.”
Stewart just kept talking. “Even the girl here has thoughts about her own sex. Yes, I can pull out that little fantasy about Angelina Jolie. I can make that happen, Zoey. My point is one as dedicated to sexual pleasure as the faery should be into all kinds of things, not just boring heterosexuality.”
“I’m a fertility god,” Dev responded, his tone flatly stating he wanted out of this conversation. He hopped off the bed and straightened his clothes. “You aren’t fertile, so I’m not interested.”
Stewart’s face spread into that Cheshire cat grin he got when he wriggled something out of your mind you didn’t want him to. “Poor little mortal. That must have really hurt to so set you off men, as deviant as you are.”
Dev turned on the demon. “Stay the fuck out of my head.”
“Leave him alone,” I told Stewart.
Stewart shrugged. “All right, but I warn you it might come up later.” Stewart turned happily back to Daniel. “Now, Your Highness, I have a few suggestions. I’m more than willing to help your queen and her…what should we call him? Assistant? Social secretary? Official royal fuck buddy? Never mind, we can come up with some suitable title later. The point is, I’m willing to give her everything she needs to make her way through the plane. I’m giving her the key to the bloody city here. I promise she’ll get there, do her job, and come back in one piece. All I ask is a few minutes of your time.”
Daniel rolled his eyes and looked at me. “You’re really going to leave me here with him?”
“I’ve done everything you asked of me tonight,” I said quietly. “I kept my mouth shut as you and Dev played me like your little pawn. Yeah, I’m going to leave you here with him.”
Daniel put his hands up in defeat.
Daniel crossed his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you just lead the way, Stewart? If you led the way, I could go with her and she wouldn’t have to rely on that amulet.”
Stewart shook his head. “Oh, no, I can’t get caught with my hands in the cookie jar. They actually cut them off if they catch you. The horrible part is the itching when they grow back. It’s really terrible. Don’t worry about it, Zoey. If they cut your hands off, you’ll just bleed out and die.”
“I feel so much better,” I said sarcastically. “Could you please get the door? We can’t be gone forever.”
Stewart held a hand up to the wall and a door appeared. He looked at me and the smile was gone. “You’ve been here, companion. You know how personal this can get. You know that it isn’t a land as you would know it. It’s something more, something personal. Don’t get lost in memory. Follow the amulet. Ignore what goes on around you.” Dev stepped toward the door, ready to go in behind me. Stewart turned to my lover. “Whatever you do, try not to think about it, Green Man. Think about something other than what they did to you. Otherwise, you might walk straight into it all over again. I wonder how she’ll feel about her paragon of masculine sexuality when she sees you like that. Don’t you?”
Dev’s face clenched as he tried to ignore the demon.
I took his hand. “Devinshea, there is nothing I could see that would make me turn from you.”
“That might be the most naïve thing I’ve ever heard you say, lover,” Dev said bitterly. He opened the door. “Let’s get this over with.”
I held his hand and walked into his nightmare.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The door closed behind us, but I could see its outline even in the soft light of day we stepped into. Everything in this place was gauzy and beautiful. The very air seemed soft and sweet. A warm wind blew through, brushing against my skin and I heard the sound of crickets chirping in the distance. It was the opposite of what I expected to find on the Hell plane. We were in a field of flowers with the sun warming our faces. I sighed at the feel, but Dev dropped my hand, and when I looked at him I knew this was not a place of beauty for him.
Whatever Stewart had talked about before was still playing through his brain. Or worse, perhaps we were there. The Hell plane was a place to relive all the bad events of your life. I should know. Stewart was right. I’d been here before. It seemed we were about to take a tour inside Dev’s crappy memories.
“Where are we?” My hand felt empty without his, but I let him keep his distance for the time being.
“We were told not to get lost in memory, Zoey.” Dev ignored my question with a cold practicality. He looked down at my chest where the amulet was still covered by the bodice of my dress. “Is that thing working? We should really get started.”
I pulled on the chain and, sure enough, the amulet pulsed in my hand. There was a hearty glow to it, nothing like the weak light it put out around Dev and me. Felix Day was here.
I wasn’t sure how it did it but the Revelation pulled me to the north. It pointed the way as though desperate to get to the angel. “This way.”
“Well, naturally it’s that way,” he said with acid under his breath. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and made a decision. “If this is the way it’s going to be, then I can lead us. We’ll be going past those caves. Come along, Zoey. I assure you it will be informative.”
He started off in the direction of the caves without waiting for me.
“Just tell me where we are, Dev.” I raced to keep up with his long-legged pace. My skirts floated around me. I used my hands to hold them up so I could run. I wished I had dressed myself for this mission.
“It’s a sithein in Scotland, inasmuch as a sithein can be considered in a country,” Dev explained in an academic fashion. What he meant was the entrance was a mound in Scotland, but the actual land of the sithein was a piece of Faery and not of the Earth plane. Though it seemed to be underground, a sithein was its own land with its own sun and moon and time.
“But you’re Irish.” His branch of faery was known as Daoine Sidhe. They were left behind when the Tuatha de Dannan left Ireland. At some point in the last couple of centuries, they immigrated to the States and then formed their own sithein.
“Yes, my ancestors inhabited Ireland, but my mother believed it was important to have her sons experience all the various forms the Fae can take. This is an Unseelie sithein,” Dev continued his lecture. “Do you know the difference between the Seelie and Unseelie courts?”
I did. One was considered blessed and the other contained all the monsters Faery could offer. Dev would be considered one of the shining ones, the Seelie. “She wanted you to understand the Unseelie?”
Dev turned, his eyes practically glacial. “She wanted us to be tortured by the Unseelie, to see if we were strong enough to rule. Or rather she wanted Declan to be tested, and I was fool enough to go with him. He was my brother. I couldn’t let him go alone.”
I tried to take his hand again, but he pushed me away. I wanted to rail against a mother who would send her sons to be tortured for some ritual, but I held my tongue on that topic. “Dev, we don’t have to do this. We can go back. I’ll find another way.”
“You think me so shallow I would leave your friend here to spare myself this pain? What am I to you, Zoey? Am I your plaything? Do I mean anything to you outside the bedroom? You seem to think I am soft, but you are about to learn the truth of me.” Without waiting for me to speak, he turned and continued to his destination.
I had no choice but to follow as the amulet in my hand was insistent he took the right path. I wished I could have left him behind, spared him this pain. I’d taken my own trip to the Hell plane earlier in the year. I knew how it could break your spirit to see all the terrible things inside your own soul. Hell isn’t so simple as a place of fire and brimstone. The real torture in Hell always resides within.
A guttural sound broke through the gauzy quiet of the day. We walked through a copse of trees that seemed to reach up, climbing into the sky. There was another shout, though I couldn’t tell what the person was saying from this distance. More yelling followed and I picked up the pace, coming out of the trees and onto a grassy field.
From my vantage point, I saw a group of creatures circling like a pack of wolves, though these were no canines. They were goblins, squat but built on muscular lines. I also counted a couple of large, dirty looking trolls and what looked to be a gnome, though his eyes were red even in the sunlight. They circled their prey, keeping them close as they taunted. I glimpsed two human-looking men in the circle.
I realized with a shock they were both a younger version of Dev with long dark hair. This was Dev and his twin, Declan, a carbon copy of his younger self. They were being roughly handled by the goblins. It looked as though they’d been dragged a decent way to get to this place. Both young men sported cuts and bruises and long tears in their clothing.
I started to move toward them, wanting more than anything to stop what was about to happen. I had an idea now, given what Stewart had said, and I couldn’t stand the thought of it.
Dev stopped me, his hand on my elbow. “There’s nothing you can do. It isn’t real, Zoey. It’s a memory, and it will play out as it will.”
He stared out at the scene in front
of him, his eyes focused.
“I like Seelie flesh,” the largest goblin announced. “The only thing better is Seelie sex.”
There was much laughter and a general consensus that pretty Seelies were the best lovers, even when they were unwilling.
“Aye, we’ll have to thank Miria for sending us these sweet meats,” another said. This one ran a hand down the front of one of the boys, rudely cupping his genitals. The boy looked ready to throw up, and I didn’t blame him. “They look delicious.”
“They’re so pretty,” a smallish troll said, his eyes lit with anticipation.
Both boys tried to get away, one pulling at the other’s shirt as though he wouldn’t let them be separated.
“How old are you?” I kept my voice calm, so he wouldn’t know how emotional I was already getting. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this couldn’t end well for Dev and his brother.
“I am seventeen.” He seemed outwardly unmoved, but I knew there was a war going on inside him. He was now in this moment, as he was then, helpless to do anything but survive.
“Which one should we start with?” one of the goblins asked, his large hands twitching like he couldn’t wait to get his fingers on that flesh.
One of the boys flinched, and I could see he was ready to run at the first given opportunity. He shrank from every creature, panic in his green eyes.
The other boy stood his ground and an arrogant laugh rang through the meadow. “You start with me, you idiot.” It was obvious he’d decided on a path. His shoulders straightened as he began stripping off his clothes. He pulled away from his captors but only to show them his amazing body. It was thinner than it was now, the body of a young man who had not quite fulfilled his full potential, but it was beautiful all the same. His hair was long and shone in the sunlight, a midnight black waterfall down his back. He was proud and every inch the young fertility god. It was no surprise every lustful eye was on him. “You start with me and you finish with me. You’ll just break him, and then you’ll get in trouble.”
