by Skye Malone
by Skye Malone
Book Two of the Demon Guardians Series
Copyright 2017 - Skye Malone
Published by Wildflower Isle | 1567 Highlands Drive NE, Suite 110-404, Issaquah WA 98029
www.wildflowerisle.com
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this text and any portions thereof in any manner whatsoever.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and incidents appearing in this work are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN-10: 1-940617-50-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-940617-50-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017933034
Cover design by Karri Klawiter
www.artbykarri.com
Join Skye Malone's mailing list!
Titles by Skye Malone
The Demon Guardians Series
The Awakened Fate Series
The Kindling Trilogy
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Afterword
“Who are you?” I demand, staring at the enormous, bald man at the doorway of Bianca’s penthouse apartment. He hasn’t stopped smiling since he came in here and his metal teeth glint in the firelight.
It’s terrifying. I manage to keep my voice from shaking when I speak, but I can’t stop the shivers running through me at the sight of his cyborg-from-hell smile.
He chuckles. “The name’s Ram. Like, battering ram?” He looks to Amar and Bianca. “You figure out why.”
I glance to them warily.
“He’s a troll,” Amar explains to me without taking his eyes from the guy.
My mouth moves, working to find a reply. A troll? I’ve already learned that vampires are real. Werewolves too. And let’s not forget me, the girl who discovered she was a succubus not that long ago.
But a troll? Seriously?
A tiny sound escapes my best friend, Ruby, at Amar’s words. I look to her, but her eyes are locked on the metal-toothed guy. She hasn’t moved from her spot on the couch since the man showed up. Bianca’s two Dobermans haven’t left her side.
“You were watching us,” Amar continues to the man. “By the river and then at Volgert’s set last night. Are you with Volgert? Another House?”
Ram’s grin doesn’t fade. “She knows I’m not.” He jerks his chin at me.
Amar’s gaze twitches my way briefly, questioning, and I’m not sure what to say. How am I supposed to know that?
“You think it was an accident I knew about that explosion at the set before it happened?” Ram asks. “You know, the one that tore up the gate in that hellhole where the Volgert scum had this girl?” He nods toward Ruby. “Your wolves were getting slaughtered back there. You didn’t stand a chance of reaching her till we helped.”
I don’t respond. He had known, though. He’d looked right at the gate before it blew up.
“That explosion crushed half the cages in there,” Amar states. “It could have killed the girl.”
“Not a chance,” Ram counters. “We knew what side of the room they were keeping the Touched on.”
“Enough,” Bianca snaps. Magic still tangles like electrified pink fog around her fists and the air crackles with static in response. “What do you want?”
“Just to deliver a message for Cait.” Ram returns his attention to me. “Linden’s already got their eye on you. Volgert and all the other Houses are going to start circling too, now that you’ve shown your face at that set and given all of them a good look at you. And if you are who we think you are, there’s a lot you need to know if you plan to survive that interest. So let us help you. Come meet us. Boris and Sons Salvage Yard. Tomorrow after sunset.”
My brow furrows. If I am who they think I am? “What—” It’s hard to keep my voice from shaking this time. “Come meet who?”
Ram doesn’t answer the question. His gaze flicks over to Amar and his lip twitches, disgust heavy in the expression. “Be careful who you trust,” he says to me.
Without another word, he turns and heads out the door.
“Hey!” Bianca snaps, striding toward the entryway after him. “What the hell do you—”
“Bianca,” Amar says.
She stops. He shakes his head slightly, the motion barely perceptible. Bianca stares at him for a second, and then looks away, muttering a curse. Scowling, she marches to the side table and snatches up her cell phone. In only a moment, she’s rapid-firing orders at someone on the other end, and giving them hell for letting Ram inside in the first place.
Amar comes over to me. “You okay?”
“What was that?” I whisper desperately.
He doesn’t respond, his eyes on Bianca.
“‘If I am who they think I am’?” I press. “What was he talking about? And what was with that look he gave you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he works for Linden?”
He’s silent.
“Amar?”
“Bianca’s people will find out.”
I glance to the girl. She’s still pissed—I can tell that from across the room—but it seems like she’s getting actual information too.
“Okay,” I allow. “But—”
“Cait.”
Amar twitches his head to Ruby.
I falter. Right. Ruby. My best friend who just watched a damn troll show up. And that’s after everything else she’s been through with the Houses and their death match and nearly losing her mind to magic.
She’s so much more important right now.
I nod quickly, dropping my questions. Amar follows while I hurry over to the couch.
“Are you alright?” I ask her, sinking down nearby.
Ruby’s gaze slides toward me and then away. I wince. Stupid question.
“I-I’m sorry about all that,” I try. “We’re safe here, though. I promise.” I work to put as much belief as I can into the words, hoping they’re true. “Is there anything I can get for you? Water? Something to eat?”
Her head shakes, a faint motion. I look to Amar for help.
“How, um…” Ruby whispers, her voice rough and shaky. I turn back. She swallows hard. “How long was I, um…”
“Twenty-four hours,” Amar replies quietly. “It’s been about twenty-four hours since they took you.”
A ragged breath leaves Ruby, like a laugh that might at any moment become a sob. Her brow twitches down like she’s trying to figure out how to process the words.
“Nothing that happened during that time was your fault,” Amar continues. “You’re not responsible for what they did to you or whatever came as a result.”
Ruby’s gaze quivers toward him, tremulous, like she’s not sure if she should trust the words.
Or maybe just their source.
“What are you?” she whispers.
I search for an answer, glancing to Amar. He raises an eyebrow at me, the expression gentle but nonetheless making clear he’s decided that whatever we tell her is my call.
I can’t quite be grateful. I’m too busy feeling nauseated.
> Clearing my throat, I brace myself. “We’re, um—”
Ruby’s attention snaps to me for the first time, her eyes wide with alarm. And my stomach climbs my throat. Oh. Oh god, she meant him, not me.
I scramble for a way to explain.
“Cait’s human,” Amar offers into the silence. “Mostly.”
Ruby hasn’t stopped staring at me, but her brow climbs higher at the statement.
“I’m sorry.” My words come out choked. “I didn’t know till a few days ago.”
She looks away and pulls the blanket tighter around herself. “I want to go back to the apartment now.”
I hesitate.
“Your place is a wreck,” Amar says. “There’s nowhere to sleep. It’d be better if you stayed here for the time being.”
For a moment, Ruby doesn’t react, and I don’t know what to do. There isn’t anywhere safer than this; not really. Amar’s maybe, but—
Ruby gives a jerky nod and pushes away from the couch, not looking at either of us.
Across the room, Bianca hangs up the phone. With a quick glance between us all, she seems to read the situation. “This way.” Bianca motions toward the stairs. “You can use one of the guest rooms. Shower’s down the hall if you want that too.”
Ruby nods again. The Dobermans trail her across the room and up the steps.
I want to follow her. Find some way to explain.
I have no idea where to begin.
“Give her time,” Amar says.
I nod for lack of anything else to do. I hope time fixes this. I’m scared to death it won’t.
She looked at me like I was a monster.
“Cait.”
I exhale sharply, pushing the thought away. “Yeah?”
“One other thing.”
Incredulous worry tangles up through me all over again. There’s something else now? “What?”
Amar hesitates. “Ruby. Chances are… there will be side effects.”
My stomach twists. Oh. That. Bianca had been starting to say something about that, right before that troll guy showed up.
I brace myself, not really wanting to hear it and knowing I have to anyway.
“I don’t think she’s noticed it yet, but…” Amar grimaces. “It’s not common for people to be saved after they become one of the Touched. Most don’t come back.”
I nod tightly. Brett told me that earlier—how only about five percent of the Touched ever manage to recover. But Ruby had. I’d hoped that was the end of it.
“The ones who can be saved, though,” Amar continues, “they have side effects—and I don’t just mean the memories. You remember how I told you that she could tell what you were, back when you first saw her at the set?”
I shift uncomfortably. I remember what she looked like, desperately clawing for us, her green eyes wild. I wish I could forget. “Yeah.”
“Things changed in her when Volgert’s people hooked her on the mist. She’s still going to be sensitive to it. To magic in others.”
“Like, she’s still addicted?”
“Not necessarily. But Ruby also can’t go back to the way she was. She’ll still be able to feel that magic inside people. You, me, Bianca. Others too, like werewolves or vampires. Everyone in the demonic world has something that separates us from humans. Depending on how sensitive she ends up being, she might be able to detect it in all of us.”
“Okay, but that’s not exactly—”
“Some of us don’t like to be recognized for what we are, Cait. Pretty much all of us, actually. And while it might annoy a few… others will kill over it.”
Oh.
I inhale sharply, attempting to stay calm. “What do I do?”
Amar pauses. “We. What do we do.”
I look up at him. His eyebrow rises slightly. I swallow hard. “Yeah.”
“We protect her. In any way we can.”
My heart pounds and for a second, I can’t take my eyes off him. It’s so simple, that statement, and right now it sort of means the world to me. I’m not alone in this. I haven’t ever been. And neither is Ruby.
I tense, fighting the impulse to reach out to him. I know that here, at Bianca’s, the motion probably won’t be welcome.
“Hey.”
Bianca’s voice shatters the moment, almost as if proving my point. “Your friend’s got the guest room at the end of the hall,” she says, coming down the stairs. “You can have the other one, if you want. Till you get your place cleaned up, anyway.”
I nod. Some part of me wishes I could stay at Amar’s, but that’d probably be hard to explain to Bianca’s satisfaction. Even if I don’t really know what this thing is between Amar and me, Bianca would be disgusted at the merest hint that there was anything else going on besides the strategic value of helping a fellow neutral. Love—or anything approaching it—is repulsive to incubi and succubi.
And anyway, I can’t leave Ruby here alone.
“Thanks,” I tell her.
She shrugs like she couldn’t care less and then disappears into the kitchen.
“You need anything,” Amar says to me, his voice low. “I’ll be down here.”
I nod again and reluctantly walk toward the stairs.
By the wall of windows in Bianca’s apartment, he stands, watching the dead streets and the lonely stoplights that flash for no one. A cool breeze from the air conditioner brushes his bare torso and stirs against the cotton pants he keeps here for whenever he stays over. His gaze glides back and forth across the empty sidewalks, as restless as he had been when he’d abandoned any pretense of sleep among the blankets on the couch. He tracks a stray dog slipping out of an alleyway, a bat flitting past a lamp in a blur of quick shadow.
And he tries not to think about how, in the space of a few short weeks, his life has torn itself apart.
For her.
His mouth tightens briefly, a hint of expression, all he allows himself. He hadn’t intended this. Hadn’t meant to seek it out, that night at the oh-so-ironically named Temptation. But Cait had been such a mystery, running like she had. Helping that Touched girl as she did.
And when he’d found out she was a Legacy… an inexplicable, impossible new Legacy who’d somehow never known of her demon half, who’d never destroyed her own humanity for the sake of survival in the demonic world…
It didn’t matter. He still should have walked away. He’d been smarter than this, once.
His gaze fastens on a couple walking along the street. They’re too far away for him to judge by their body language if they’re ordinary humans. The distance won’t matter for Ruby, though. Not once she gets past her own horror and becomes aware of what’s happened to her.
There’d been a time he might have considered using that, or at least wouldn’t have stopped Bianca or Brett from doing the same.
The couple rounds the corner and disappears from view.
Letting out a breath, he turns away from the tall windows. He knows what it is. Why he hadn’t abandoned Cait. Why he keeps compromising every rule that’s kept him safe, no matter how suicidal that compromise could prove to be. By this point, most Legacies knew they lived on a knife’s edge, always in danger of looking not enough like predators and too much like prey. They’d long since eradicated every trace of what they’d once been in an unending quest to become indistinguishable from the demons with whom they’d never truly belong. And to allow anyone to see that the human side of you wasn’t fully dead…
It meant taking your life in your hands.
Until her.
His eyes close briefly, his brow furrowing, and he knows he needs to get his emotions back under control. She’s made it harder. He keeps letting down his guard with her. Keeps getting caught by the sheer wonder of her, the only person he’s ever seen who might accept both sides of him. Who isn’t revolted by his humanity, who wasn’t terrified to find out he’s a demon. And who looks at him with those deep, gorgeous hazel eyes like she wants—desperately wants—to know and trust the person
he secretly hopes he still is somewhere inside.
It’s breathtaking. Liberating. Excruciating.
And it tells him lies.
He rests a hand on the back of a stiff armchair. He can’t lose himself to this, to any of it. Bianca is still a problem and he’s certain she’ll see through him eventually. He’s amazed on some level that she hasn’t already. He’d convinced her that he only wanted to help Cait because she could be useful to him, one more neutral Legacy with whom to form an alliance. He’d made her believe that was the end of it.
There’s no predicting what Bianca will do when she realizes he’s been lying to her.
And worse are the other demons. It makes him sick to think they might suspect he cares for Cait, sick to think what they might do in response to that knowledge. Emotion was leverage, after all, and pain was too. But then, his actions thus far have been explainable. They’ve had strategic value.
Except for the ones that ended him up at the set last night.
And what he did while there…
His fingers press harder against the white upholstery. Cait won’t have to know. Last night will be the end of it. The closest he’s come in years to the nightmare of what he really is, and the closest he’ll need to come. It’s over now.
He runs his gaze over the silhouetted furniture and décor of the apartment, working to believe the thought. The shadows are thick here; more than bulletproof glass impedes the moonlight trying to illuminate the room. Defenses coat the apartment, set in place from the moment the daughter of business mogul Milford Chastain had moved in and reinforced often by the army of personal security Bianca keeps on the floors below. They shouldn’t have broken for anyone, not even a troll.
If she is who they think she is…
The words haunt him. He fears what they might mean. He’d hoped she was simply a castoff. The child of some demon who hadn’t been able to locate her for one reason or another. He’d tried to make himself believe that Volgert’s strange fixation on her and the way Alistair Linden had looked at her could all be chalked up to their desire to conscript another succubus to their cause.
