Chase the Dark (Steel & Stone Book 1)

by Annette Marie

  “Hi,” she said breathily, batting her eyelashes. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a succubus, so the man stared at her for only a second before he looked at the oblivious Ash with an “is she effing crazy?” look.

  Ash was still holding her hand. She slung her other arm around the man’s neck and cuddled in. “I missed you, daddy,” she cooed in a little girl voice. “Where have you been?” She giggled brainlessly.

  The guard looked outraged at being mistaken for dad-aged. With a sudden shake of his head, Ash finally snapped out of it. He mumbled an apology as he leaned over her as if he were going to pick her up. Instead, he caught the guard’s wrist. The air sizzled with magic and the man’s eyes rolled back. His head lolled as he went limp and started snoring.

  Piper lurched to her feet and shoved Ash with both hands, forcing him out of the way. As he stepped back, her hair blinked from blond back to red and black. “What the hell was that, Ash?” she spat. “You almost ruined everything.”

  He again looked down the hall, his nostrils flaring. Without a single word of explanation or defense, he shook his head and turned toward the nurse’s desk. Piper almost burst with fury but before she could say anything else, Zwi sprang onto the desk, a file folder already clamped between her teeth. Ash scooped her off the desk and passed Piper the folder. She swallowed her anger, saving it for later, and snapped the file open. It was her uncle’s. Could Zwi read?

  “He’s in room 344,” she read. “Damn. I was hoping he’d be on the main level.” She skimmed the page. “Thank God. It says he’s expected to recover . . . anticipate scarring . . . damage to left eye . . . broken ribs on right side . . . oh no.”

  “What?” Ash demanded.

  “It says his throat was damaged from”—she squinted at the page—“inhaling superheated air during the explosion. What if he can’t talk?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Ash muttered, grabbing her hand. Her hair turned blond again. “Let’s find the stairs.”

  Lyre had vanished with the middle-aged nurse. Lucky for him, he didn’t have to do anything with the woman—an incubus talking dirty could keep a girl distracted for quite a while. The idea was to get in and out without anyone in the medical center realizing something shifty had happened. Ash couldn’t put everyone to sleep.

  They passed two cranky-looking nurses on their way down the hall. Piper had to work hard to act natural but Ash, like all daemons, was a flawless actor. The nurses barely glanced at him. She hoped Ash hadn’t noticed how sweaty her palm was getting. What she wouldn’t give to have a weapon hidden on her somewhere; they could run into gun-toting prefects at any moment.

  They found the stairs without incident. As they began climbing, Piper’s nerves ratcheted higher. Ash glanced at her and she knew her anxiety was triggering instincts he normally kept suppressed—those pesky hunter instincts that made him want to pounce on fearful prey.

  Reaching the third floor, he peeked through the heavy metal fire door and immediately ducked back inside. Zwi changed color to match the whitewashed brick walls and slipped through the crack. Piper clutched Ash’s hand and leaned closer.

  “Prefects?” she mouthed.

  He shook his head. “Doctor,” he whispered.

  She squinted at him. “Uh, so what’s the problem?”

  “He’s a daemon,” he explained, peering through the crack. “He’ll recognize me as daemon straight off.”

  The minutes ticked by, their precious time trickling away. Sooner or later, someone would find the sleeping guard and shake him out of his magic-induced nap. The guard would then wonder where those two kids had gone. And Lyre couldn’t keep the nurse busy forever.

  As she waited, a flicker of motion caught her attention. A big black spider clung to the wall near the landing a few feet away. She sucked in a breath and inched back. It crawled a little further up the wall. She stared, barely breathing.

  “What are you doing?” Ash hissed.

  She blinked, realizing she was pushing him into the door in her unconscious attempt to get away from the spider. “Uh—”

  “Where are my keys?” someone male demanded right on the other side of the door. A female voice muttered a reply, then the guy growled, “They were in my pocket a minute ago.” Another female mutter. “I didn’t drop them.”

  Ash smirked into the line of the light leaking between the door and jam. Piper smiled nervously. Zwi was brilliant.

  “Let’s go,” Ash said as the thumping footsteps retreated. He straightened and stepped boldly through the threshold. Piper leaped to follow, delighted to leave the spider behind. The hallway smelled strongly of chemicals and was quiet with a sleepy sort of stillness. Closed doors lined the hall, each with a number. The nearest was 302.

  “Which way?” she whispered.

  A trilling sound made them both look up. Zwi clung to the ceiling, a ring of keys in her mouth and her wings flared for balance. She scuttled off toward the east end of the building. Together, she and Ash strode after her. The hall seemed to go on forever but the room numbers weren’t increasing fast enough. Shouldn’t there be more security guards or something? Where was everyone? The entire floor was totally silent.

  The hall took a sharp left. Ash and Piper crept to corner and peered around it. Halfway down to the hall, just as they’d feared, two prefects stood guard on either side of a closed door. They looked bored out of their minds but both had holstered handguns. This was where things got dicey.

  Ash pulled her back and let go of her hand.

  “Change of plan,” he whispered. “I have a better idea.”

  He took a couple steps back and closed his eyes. Concentration tightened his features. His whole body shimmered like he was standing on the hottest pavement ever. He grew taller and his clothes brightened into pale blue doctor’s scrubs. A goatee formed on his face and he aged fifteen years. The shimmers faded and a total stranger stood in front of her. He looked like a doctor down to every detail, including the clipboard under his arm. She was betting he was an identical replica of the doctor with the missing keys.

  “That’s . . . wow,” she breathed. “I didn’t know you could take glamour that far.”

  “It’s not glamour. It’s an illusion.”

  Piper frowned. Wasn’t glamour a type of illusion? Ash told her to wait there and stepped confidently around the corner.

  Zwi appeared beside her, poking her pale nose out to watch her master. Piper followed suit, peeking around the corner. Ash had reached the prefects. He looked down at his clipboard and said something to the prefects. One of them shook his head, looking irritated.

  It happened so fast Piper would have missed it if she’d blinked. The illusion vanished as Ash slammed a fist into each prefect’s throat. They collapsed in unison, unable to make a sound. The draconian hit one then the other with his sleep spell. Piper rushed around the corner and ran to meet him.

  Well, so much for the no-suspicious-behavior strategy. Maybe the prefects would assume the doctor was crazy. Together, they dragged the prefects into an empty room across the hall. Then, shaking slightly with nerves, Piper reached for the doorknob to room 344.

  The door swung open before she touched the handle.

  CHAPTER 5

  AT the same time the door handle disappeared from under her hand, Ash yanked her back. He backed up so swiftly Piper tripped on her own feet.

  Two men stood in the doorway grinning—no, leering. They were daemons. Even though their glamours made them essentially indistinguishable from humans, Piper had years of training in recognizing daemons; it was more a gut instinct than any sort of telltale sign. Daemons had this feeling to them, like the air right before a thunderstorm.

  These two looked like leather-clad bounty hunters, heavily muscled and tattooed, no less than six and half feet of nasty bully mixed with powerful arrogance. One of them massaged his knuckles as if he couldn’t wait to use them. The second, armed with a blond Mohawk, folded his arms with difficulty—too much bulging muscle—and kept
on leering.

  Knuckles gave Piper a dismissive sneer and focused on Ash. “So,” he rumbled like that one word said everything.

  Mohawk licked his lips. “Figured you’d show up here, dragon-boy. Come to finish the shmuck off? You shoulda killed him right the first time.”

  “What are you doing in that room?” Piper demanded.

  They ignored her. “You’ve blown it,” Mohawk went on in his gravelly voice. “Were you actually stupid enough to steal it and get caught? Damn, that’s amateur. Tempted, were you?” He shook his head in mock sadness. “The boss ain’t happy, dragon-boy. He wants it. And he especially didn’t want the damn prefect-patrol involved. You’ve screwed things up royally.”

  “You’re on our hit list now, buddy,” Knuckles added with another leer.

  “Maybe if you give it to us, we won’t kill you,” Mohawk said. “But unlikely. Either way, you’re dead.”

  Piper swallowed hard. As she’d known would happen, rumors had leaked into the daemon community that they had the Sahar. Ash was well known; of course would-be thieves of the Stone would track him down first.

  “I didn’t steal it.” Ash raised his eyebrows. “Do I look like I possess infinite power?”

  “That don’t mean a thing,” Knuckles said. “We hear it’s hard to use. Still figuring it out, ain’t ya?”

  “Besides,” Mohawk said, rolling his shoulders to loosen the muscles, “even if you didn’t steal it, everyone still thinks you did. Just as bad, wouldn’t you say? You fucked up. Boss doesn’t tolerate anyone who fucks up his business. You know that.”

  Piper looked back and forth between Ash and Mohawk. The conversation wasn’t quite making sense anymore. Had she missed something?

  “But I think you did steal it. Couldn’t resist a bit more power, could you? Hand it over now and I’ll kill you quick and clean—better than what the rest of the boss’s beasts have planned for you.”

  Ash exhaled. He angled closer to Piper and brought his mouth to her ear. “I’ll take care of these two,” he whispered. “You get in there and talk to your uncle. I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Can you handle them?” she whispered back, eyeing the two goons. They oozed cruelty, but more than that, the air around them was already crackling with magic. They weren’t minor daemons.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, sounding grouchy.

  “What will it be, dragon-boy?”

  Ash turned to the goons, looked at them for a long moment—and then walked away.

  “If you give us the—hey!” Mohawk yelled. “I’m talking here!”

  Ash kept on walking. Both goons started after him with angry snarls, striding right past Piper as though she didn’t exist. She stared after them. Wasn’t it customary to taunt your enemies to make them follow you? Remembering what she was supposed to be doing, she rushed through the open door and snapped it shut behind her. She then turned to the lone bed in the room and her heart squeezed in her chest.

  The man on the bed was wrapped in so many bandages he was unrecognizable. Beeping equipment surrounded him, made up of chunks of mismatched machinery patched together. New hospital equipment was scarce so repairs were made with whatever was available. The overhead lights were dimmed, leaving everything layered in shadows.

  Piper crept to the side of the bed. Bandages were wrapped around his head and over his left eye. In typical Uncle Calder fashion, he seemed to sense her presence and his right eye cracked open. The green orb, exactly like hers, gazed at the ceiling before drifting over to her. It widened in shocked recognition.

  “Uncle Calder,” she gasped, and to her horror, she burst into tears.

  With shaking fingers, she found his hand under the blankets and clutched it, weeping like a little kid. It took her several deep breaths to get under control. Sniffling, she tried to smile.

  “Sorry,” she gasped, swallowing repeatedly against the lump in her throat. “I was so afraid you’d died . . .”

  He managed a bit of a smile, impressive with tape all over his face and a tube in his nose. She squeezed his hand and sniffled again. Okay, focus.

  “Can you talk?” she asked.

  He twisted his lips into something like a grimace. No, apparently.

  “Okay,” she muttered, thinking fast. “Okay, just listen then.” As succinctly as she could, she outlined everything that had happened since the explosion in the vault. “And we can’t clear our names unless we find out who did this first,” she finished.

  Calder’s mouth hung open, whether with shock or horror she couldn’t tell. Piper paused, then swallowed hard. “Did—did Father kill everyone in the vault?” she whispered.

  He blinked rapidly and his lips formed a silent “no”.

  She slumped in relief. “I knew it,” she breathed, then quickly straightened. “So do you know who attacked you?” She twisted her hands together. “Did you recognize them or . . . or something?”

  Calder didn’t respond, staring at her with the strangest look. Almost like he was afraid to answer. Finally, after what felt like a full minute, he gave the tiniest nod.

  She squeezed his hand and leaned forward, her heart pounding. “Who?” she demanded. “Who was it?”

  He stared back at her helplessly, his lips forming silent words. She’d always sucked at lip-reading. She swore under her breath and looked around the barren room. Leaping to her feet, she grabbed the clipboard off the foot of his bed, tore off a sheet, and flipped it to the blank back.

  “Okay,” she said breathlessly. “I’ll recite the alphabet. Close your eye and when I hit the first letter, open it. We’ll spell out a name.”

  He smiled his agreement. She began, making it all the way to S before his eye opened. She wrote it on her paper and started again. The next letter was A. Then F. The letter E followed, but Calder wouldn’t close his eye after that.

  “Safe?” she read. She held up the paper. “‘Safe’ is the name? That’s not a name!”

  He stared at her, frowning. Apparently she wasn’t getting the message.

  “Are you telling me to be safe? Or go somewhere safe instead of trying to find these people?” Fury launched her to her feet. “Don’t you get it? There is nowhere safe for me anymore. I’m a fugitive. If the prefects catch me, they’ll lock me up forever. And if they don’t get me, some daemon or haemon is going to skewer me and steal the Stone.”

  Calder closed his eye again and Piper almost screamed at him she was so mad, but then he opened it and gave her a “get on with it” look. She realized he wanted to spell something else. Forcing herself to sit again, she started the alphabet. O-F-F-I-C-E.

  “Office?” she repeated blankly. “Safe and office? Your office is not safe!”

  His brow furrowed. Safe. Office. How did those two words equal the attackers? Then it clicked.

  “The safe in Father’s office,” she said triumphantly. Calder smiled. “You have information in there? I don’t know the combination.”

  Calder closed his eye and they started the spelling game again, this time with numbers. 14-25-9. The combination.

  “Thank you, Uncle Calder,” she whispered, leaning down to give him a gentle hug. “We’ll find out who these people are and we’ll get Father back. I promise.”

  He slowly mouthed two words: Be careful.

  “I will, don’t worry. Ash and Lyre are helping me.”

  Instead of appearing comforted, Calder’s face scrunched with worry. He looked at her chest, then back to her face. His mouth moved again, forming a single word—oh! Sahar. He was asking about the Sahar.

  She patted her chest. “It’s right here, I still have it.”

  He squinted at her hand over the hidden box and gave her an imploring look.

  “You want to see it?” She huffed and muttered about him not believing her, but she still stuck a hand in the front of her t-shirt and pulled out the little black ring box. She flipped it open, glanced at the little gray stone, and held it out for her uncle to see.

  He looked a
t the Sahar and paled so fast she could almost see the blood draining from his face. His expression was unmistakably horrified.

  “Uncle Calder?” she yelped, jumping up. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”

  His mouth opened—and the hospital exploded.

  Piper hit the floor, clutching the ring box to her chest as the floor quaked. Equipment fell off stands and crashed to the floor. A wave of low-level electricity rippled through the air in the wake of the explosion—magic. She lifted her head, realizing the building hadn’t exploded. But something had.

  She launched to her feet, stuffing the box back into her shirt, and dashed to Calder’s side. Seeing he was okay, she grabbed him in a brief, intense hug.

  “I have to go. I love you.”

  When she burst out the door of the room, she found a medical center in chaos. Nurses were running everywhere. Patients had come out of their rooms and all the missing security guards had finally materialized. With people screaming and running around like idiots, no one noticed Piper. She looked around wildly, trying to remember which way the stairwell was.

  A piercing scream cut through all the noise and a woman came tearing down the hall at full pelt.

  “Monsters!” she shrieked hysterically. “Monsters in the lounge!”

  Another boom shook the building so hard half the people crowding the hall fell over. Piper grabbed a wall for balance, breathing fast. “Monsters” meant daemons without glamour. She knew of only five daemons in the building—Ash, Lyre, Mohawk, Knuckles, and Doctor Daemon. Piper was pretty sure she knew which three were having an all out battle in the lounge.

  She ran down the hallway in the direction the screaming lady had come from. Come to think of it, why was that daemon impersonating a human doctor? No matter how good at healing magic they might be, daemons weren’t allowed in medical centers that treated humans; some castes liked to feed off pain and suffering.