The Last Unforgiven - Freed (Demons, #5)

by Simcoe, Marina

  “Right.”

  “That includes our children.” A deep frown settled on Sytrius’s face.

  “Yes.”

  “And you kept this from us?” Sytrius growled. “All this time?”

  “No surprise there,” Ivarr muttered. “He never cared about a soul in his life.”

  “You . . .” Sytrius glared at Raim.

  “Sytrius.” Andras’s voice held a warning.

  “Right.” Ivarr tipped his head Raim’s way. “Now that he finally started coming clean, we need to keep him talking.”

  Sytrius kept quiet this time, although the dark resentment never left his face.

  Raim couldn’t blame him for that, the demon had the right to hate him—all of them had. In his desire to protect the Incubi as a race back when he was the Grand Master, Raim had not been particularly discriminating in the methods he used to accomplish it.

  “The Priory has been using the soros urn against us for hundreds of years,” he continued when all had settled down once again. “It’s their main source of power. I had no reason to believe they would keep this piece of information away from the new Grand Master. In fact, I thought the Elder would rush to make Andras or Vadim aware of this as soon as I left, to ensure both Councils’ continuous cooperation.”

  “Why have you never shared this before that?” Vadim asked. “You had six centuries to tell us about the urn.”

  Shame was the main reason. Raim couldn’t bear to confess about him being summoned and falling under a human’s control, no matter how brief that happened to be. As the Incubi Grand Master, he surely would have lost some of their respect, had they known.

  After all these centuries, it still hurt to admit his defeat.

  “What would you have done with this knowledge?” he asked, feeling suddenly tired.

  He had wasted plenty of time while serving as Grand Master, trying to figure out how to free his kind from that particular threat. There was nothing to be done about it. He wasn’t sure anything could be accomplished now, either. Desperation to save Dee pushed him to this point. He was sharing this information in hopes that the rest of them might see something he had been missing for centuries.

  “You have made this decision for us,” Andras accused. “You should have told us all of this long time ago—”

  “And how would you have handled The Priory elders back then?” Raim bit off, not holding back the sarcasm. “If most of you couldn’t even remember your own name until two years ago?”

  Mentioning the Incubi’s diminishing mental powers was a mistake—no one wanted to be reminded of those times.

  Except that for all of them, the ravaging Incubi hunger was just a memory now. Raim was the only one who still felt it acutely, with all of his being.

  “It was because you starved us,” Ivarr gritted through his teeth. “Say one more stupid thing like that, and I swear I’m going to break every bone in your body.”

  Threats were the peak of insolence. Raim might no longer be the Grand Master, but he could not allow anyone to disrespect him in his own house.

  “I will most certainly break some of yours in return,” he retorted coolly, struggling to maintain his composure.

  “And how would you do that?” Ivarr challenged. “Without your army to do the dirty work for you?”

  “Calm down!” Andras raised his voice, his patience obviously wearing thin.

  “I won’t be needing an army to break your legs, this time.” Raim ignored Andras. The rising anger was not that easy to stop when giving into it was so tempting.

  “You Hell’s spawn!” Ivarr’s own temper lashed out as he sprung to his feet, ready to attack.

  “Both of you!” Vadim’s deep voice rose over everything else, his heavy hand on Ivarr’s shoulder sending the blond demon back into his seat. “Now is not the time or the place to settle your differences. More is at stake than your egos here.”

  “We have an important issue to solve,” Sytrius agreed, turning to Raim. “You said the Elder is planning to get rid of us by the end of the next month. I understand that someone from The Priory will finally touch the urn? Why do they want to wait until then? Why not do it right now?”

  “Why has no one done that before, I wonder.” Vadim appeared to think out loud. “We all know they have always despised us. Why have they been waiting all this time to get rid of us?”

  Raim drew in a long, calming breath, gathering his focus.

  “The writings say that if the urn is touched either by a demon or a human, those who are in possession of the urn will vanish also. Since The Priory is the one who owns the urn, it has always been interpreted that the whole organization would cease to exist. They have been viewing themselves as guardians of the Earth, keeping the Incubi under control and humanity away from danger.”

  “What’s changed now?” Andras asked.

  “A new Elder,” Raim replied

  “He is not that new,” Sytrius objected, moving his gaze from him to Andras. “It’s his third decade, isn’t it?”

  “But it will be his last,” Raim explained. “The Elder is dying, with only a few months to live. So, he figured he might as well take all of us with him.”

  “His Priory, too?” Disgust and disbelief filtered into Vadim’s voice. “Are the rest of them aware of what he has planned?”

  “Some, but I don’t think he made it clear to everyone.”

  “And you let him go, Raim?” Sytrius restlessly stirred in his chair. “After the news he delivered?”

  “If I didn’t, we all would have been gone already. He had a contingency plan, someone else who would have touched the urn had he not returned from my house unharmed that night.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Would you prefer if I’d assumed he was bluffing and took a chance, instead?” Irritation scratched at Raim’s carefully regained composure.

  “Fine,” Vadim said in a pacifying tone. “The real question is, what do we do now, in the weeks we still have left.”

  “I have another question,” Ivarr said. “When exactly did the Elder come to your house?”

  “About a month ago,” Raim admitted quickly. Too quickly, he realized, suddenly figuring out where it could lead—to Dee.

  “Why did it take you that long to give me a call?” Andras asked.

  “Don’t you dare to blame it on bad reception,” Ivarr warned under his breath.

  They didn’t need to know about Dee, Raim decided, something strongly possessive inside him urging him to keep her a secret from the entire world.

  “It doesn’t matter why I called when I did,” he said, loud and clear. “What matters is that I want to stop the Elder.”

  “Why?” Andras kept his penetrating stare on him.

  “Because I want to stay in this world, just like the rest of you do, I’m sure.”

  “So you’re going to order us to stop the Elder for you?” Ivarr scoffed. “And we’ll make it happen, out of habit—doing what you say?”

  “No. I’m hoping you will help me figure out how it could be done, since all of you have something at stake here.” He moved his gaze from one face to another, scanning their emotions and trying to gauge each demon’s thoughts.

  “Then you need to tell us everything,” Andras demanded.

  “I already have.”

  “What exactly did the writing say?” Vadim demanded. “The carvings on the urn? Do you remember the exact wording?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Raim strained his memory before starting to recite the phrases in the language none of them used any longer, the one from another world. He hadn’t heard it for so long, the words now sounded foreign, even to his own ear.

  “So,” Vadim said as soon as Raim finished. “No demon or human can touch the urn without perishing,” he sounded energetic and ready for action. “But what is that part about someone with mixed blood?”

  “A condition,” Andras muttered, as if to himself.

  “The urn can be destr
oyed only by one of mixed blood,” Raim repeated, this time in English.

  “Demon and human?” Ivarr clarified.

  “Yes.”

  “A cambion then?” Vadim added.

  “All the cambions are still too small,” Sytrius objected. “Phoenix is the oldest, and he is not even two yet. He is good at destroying things, that’s for sure, but I am not letting him anywhere near that snake pit, The Priory, even if he were older and stronger.”

  There were more cambions out there, older and stronger than Sytrius’s son.

  But Raim would never allow Dee to be pulled into this.

  There had to be another way.

  Chapter 17

  JUDGING BY THE DEMONS’ voices, the atmosphere in the room buzzed with testosterone and overcharged egos. Listening to their conversation, thoughts whirled and turned in my head.

  ‘Everyone with demon blood in them will vanish.’

  If Olyena and Gremory were indeed my ancestors as Raim believed they were then I, too, had demon blood in me.

  I was the reason why Raim called Andras, it dawned on me.

  He said the Elder visited him a month ago. Yet he didn’t call Andras until last night, which would be a few hours after Raim had discovered the broken grate and who I was.

  He had been prepared to leave this world, until he learned I’d be dying, too. He then decided to stop it from happening, and called the others for help.

  My chest tightened, squeezing all air out.

  ‘Cambion.’ The word came from inside the room.

  One of mixed blood.

  Demon and human.

  Like me.

  In less than two days, I had discovered not only the origins of my family, but also the actual name for my kind.

  I understood the end was coming to all of them, which included me now, too. I realized only a cambion could stop this from happening. I was much older than Sytrius’s son. Much stronger, too.

  Swiping my hands down my thighs to wipe my sweaty palms, I swallowed hard and stepped through the archway and into the light coming from the sitting room.

  “I’ll do it,” I offered, my voice coming out hoarse from the nerves vibrating through me as everyone’s attention turned to me at once.

  All four demons, dressed in identical charcoal-grey hoodies and dark pants, rose from their seats at the sight of me. The expressions on their handsome faces turned guarded.

  “Who are you?” someone asked.

  “I’ve told you to keep your voices down,” Raim hissed at them, clearly irritated.

  I blinked, my eyes getting used to the soft yellow light coming from the crystal wall sconces in the room. Dressed in a powder-blue tunic over his lounge pants, Raim moved from one of the open windows towards me.

  The others remained standing next to their armchairs.

  “Dee.” Raim’s voice carried both warning and concern as he crossed the room to me. “You should be in bed.”

  “Who is this woman, Raim?” The Incubus, whose voice I recognized as Vadim’s, glared at Raim with menace.

  “For the love of the Divine!” the blond, burly demon—Ivarr—growled. “You lying bastard! You’re hiding Sources in here, aren’t you?”

  “Is that the true purpose of this property?” Andras asked, folding his arms across his chest. “Isolated as it is? Is that why you kept it a secret?”

  “How did you get here, miss?” Sytrius asked me, his voice and expression softening.

  “None of this is any of your business,” Raim snapped at them, turning to me. “Please go to bed, Dee. I’ll deal with them.”

  I shook my head and addressed the room over his shoulder, “My name is Delilah Neri—”

  “Doctor Delilah Neri?” Ivarr narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Yes.”

  He said a string of words under his breath. I didn’t get the exact meaning, but I was pretty sure it sounded like some elaborate cursing.

  Through Kitty, Ivarr must have learned about my connection with The Priory. And since there was obviously no love lost between the Incubi and that organization, I understood his dislike of me based on that.

  “You are so lucky to have a woman like Kitty, Ivarr,” I told him, schooling my expression to appear unaffected by his hostility. “She’s said nothing but good things about you.”

  “Kitty is a sweetheart.” He crossed his thick arms over his wide chest. “She manages to find good in everyone. She told me lots of nice stuff about you, too, although that does not change the fact that you work for The Priory.”

  The demons glared at me. Raim faced the room, shifting his position to shield me with his back and forcing me to lean around his wide shoulder to see them.

  “I’m not a member of The Priory,” I argued. “I have been helping them occasionally on assignments. The latest one was to assist the women released from your Base to successfully return to their lives. I made living arrangements for them, matched them with therapists and counsellors, and obtained identification papers. Similar to how I assisted Kitty during her first weeks back home.”

  “How do we know this is not some new project you’re now doing for The Priory?” Vadim inquired.

  “Spying, maybe?” Ivarr chimed in.

  “That’s enough,” Raim barked, moving on him.

  I stopped him by placing my hand on his arm then stepped around his large frame. “Because you could see if I were lying, couldn’t you? And because, as it turns out, I have a stake in this situation. Apparently, I am a cambion, which means I also have only over a month to live if the Elder has his way.”

  “Impossible,” Vadim shook his head, disbelief on his face.

  Andras and Sytrius remained quiet, watching me intently.

  “There is no way you could be a cambion.” Ivarr slid his gaze up and down my entire body, as if he expected to see some solid proof to my claim sprout out of me. “There were no demon-human unions before Sytrius and Alyssa, and most certainly no mixed blood in this world.

  I came flush with him. “So, you think I’m a regular woman?”

  “I see nothing else but a human in you,” he replied, holding my gaze.

  “How would you explain this then?” I shoved at his shoulders, not holding back my strength.

  His eyes opened wide in shock as he plopped back on his ass, into the chair.

  “Or this?” I crouched in front of him.

  Staring at me in astonishment, he jerked his legs to the side away from me, and I grabbed under his chair, lifting the whole thing up—the chair and the grumpy Viking in it.

  First, I heaved it up to my chest, then higher and over my head. Holding Ivarr under the vaulted ceiling with my arms outstretched, I pivoted around, meeting the dumbfounded gazes of the Incubi in the room, one by one. “Not exactly a regular human, am I?”

  Admitting this brought a bitter-sweet feeling.

  The bitterness came from the obvious failure of my life-long desire to fit in. Ever since I could remember, I tried hard to pass for ‘normal’—from holding my strength back when shoving a playground bully away, to later when begging my husband to open jars for me.

  At the same time, there was something liberating in coming clean. For once, I got to use this power coursing through my veins in front of others. My muscles tingled with the release of energy that spread in ripples down my skin as I held the demon over my head, the biggest one of them to boot.

  “Hey, um . . .” he called from under the ceiling.

  “This is incredible.” Vadim came closer, sliding an inquisitive gaze up my arms. “There is absolutely nothing I see inside you that would suggest to me you’re anything else but a pure-blooded human.”

  “For the sake of the Divine!” Ivarr boomed over us. “Can you set me down, now? Before you drop me? I don’t have the time to be healing broken bones.”

  “He didn’t say ‘please’.” Sytrius winked at me.

  “Yeah.” Andras tilted his head back, tossing a teasing glance up at Ivarr. “Where are your manner
s, demon?”

  “Fine,” Ivarr groaned. “Please? Miss?”

  “Doctor,” Sytrius corrected. “You’re supposed to address her as Doctor, I believe. Right?” he asked me, but I’d already taken pity on the poor Viking, lowering his armchair back to the ground and setting it down on the rug as gently as I could.

  “Not fully human,” I concluded softly, rubbing the strain out of my shoulders not used to carrying that amount of weight.

  “If you are a cambion,” Vadim said slowly. “How did you come to be?”

  “Archives mention a human-demon couple, don’t they?” Sytrius directed a questioning look at Andras, who in turn stared at Raim.

  Without saying a word, Raim stepped close to me again, taking my arm, but understanding already spread on Andras’s face.

  “Gremory?” he asked quietly.

  Raim nodded briefly, staring out the window without meeting his gaze.

  “He was the demon who got executed?” Sytrius clarified.

  “Were you there?” Andras kept watching Raim, suspicion slithering into his gaze.

  “Did you have something to do with it?” Vadim questioned Raim, too, the atmosphere in the room thickened, and I felt Raim’s grip on my arm tighten.

  “Stop this.” I swept the demons’ faces with my gaze. “Raim was not involved in that execution in any way. You know what times those were—you’ve lived through them. Gremory and his woman were not the only ones executed for witchcraft back then.”

  “Except that the archives mention the 1800’s. The times of executing suspected witches had actually passed by then,” Andras said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin.

  “Being different has never been easy.” I felt the need to defend Raim as he stood silently next to me. “Even now. I can only imagine what it was like back then.” Freeing my arm, I wrapped it around his waist, leaning into his side and earning another series of intense stares from the Incubi in the room. “Anyway, that’s not what we all should be worried about right now. I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I would really like to stick around for longer than just another month.”

  Chapter 18

  “I’LL SEARCH THE ARCHIVES for a detailed map of The Priory,” Andras said.